


Ghosts in Amber

by fullofleaves



Category: Crimson Peak (2015), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bottom Tony Stark, M/M, Murder, Supporting Character Death, Top Loki, crimson peak au, early 20th century, ghost story, gothic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 20:51:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 50,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8637640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullofleaves/pseuds/fullofleaves
Summary: Tony Stark has two frivolous hobbies.  The first is photography.  The second is hunting ghosts.  When the mysterious Loki Sharpe steps suddenly into his life, he's presented with the perfect opportunity to combine both.  He follows Loki from Buffalo, New York, to Cumberland, England, where things take a turn for the strange and he begins to wonder if he's trapped himself in terrifying situation beyond what he can survive.   A Crimson Peak AU.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is very vaguely based on the plot of Crimson Peak, with a lot of things changed based on my personal preferences. Less incest, more supernatural, and more science, because that's how I roll. If you loved the aesthetic of Crimson Peak but were as disappointed in the plot as I was, this story is dedicated to you!
> 
> Written for the 2016 Frostiron Bang, my artist was the incredibly talented [lomezzo](http://lomezzo.tumblr.com/), who made two beautiful illustrations! You can see them together in her [tumblr post](http://lomezzo.tumblr.com/post/153575771269/my-contribution-to-the-2016-frostiron-bang-d), and I've also added them into the story in the appropriate chapters (3 and 8). I love what she did, and am beyond honored to have her work attached to my writing. :) Thank you!

In the largely empty top floor warehouse space of the Stark Industries office building, the last frames of film flickered out and the projection on the wall turned dark. Switching off the projector light, Tony turned around with his arms held wide. “So?” he asked. “What did you think?”

Of all the men in the world Tony could count on to tell the complete truth, no matter the situation, Bruce Banner would be at the top of his list. And for a minute Tony was certain that truth was going to be harsh: Bruce looked like he was stalling. He pulled off his glasses and used the end of his scarf to clean the lenses before carefully putting them back on.

“It’s...” Bruce said, shaking his head. “Where in the world did you get that?”

“A friend sent it to me. From New York City. For an appalling price, but he knows my interest in moving pictures and thought I’d like it: it’s the latest thing. From France. But you still haven’t told me what you think.”

“I don’t know what I think,” Bruce answered. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s astounding.”

“It’s called _Le Voyage dans la Lune_ , created by a Frenchman named Georges Méliès. Apparently he has a studio in Paris, built all of glass, where he makes his moving pictures. But it’s better than anything that’s ever come out of Edison’s studio, isn’t it? Méliès is miles ahead of anything being done in America.”

“How does he do it? The stars coming out, the moon men disappearing in a puff of smoke... How is it possible?”

“Trick photography,” said Tony, feeling a grin break across his face at finally having the opportunity to discuss this with somebody in person rather than through letters. “In the middle of the action, they stop the camera, and all the actors freeze in place. Then the moon man leaves the set, they replace him with a smoke canister, and the camera starts again. But when we watch the finished picture, it’s all one smooth scene. And the best part is,” he adds, winding the film back onto the empty reel, “we’re only beginning to learn what we can do with moving pictures as an art form. Look at what Edison did five years ago, and compare it to what Méliès has done now. Then think about what somebody else will come up with in the next five years! Better film that can capture a sharper picture. Smaller cameras that can be easily carried to fantastic locations. New tricks. Pictures with _sound_! Somebody’s going to figure out how to do it, Bruce. And I want to be the first.”

“And your father is going to let you?” Bruce asked.

Tony finished winding the film all the way back before he answered. “Well...” he eventually said. “...He hasn’t exactly told me I can’t...”

“You haven’t told him about this yet, have you?”

“Not quite,” Tony replied. “But. I’m about to. I just needed something to show him. Something impressive. Something of obvious value, that will guarantee a return on investment. I think I can appeal to the practical side of things. The manufacture of celluloid film, for example. I’ve been working on some new chemical compounds that capture a wider array of light.”

But Bruce shook his head, looking down at his hands. “I don’t know, Tony. Your father strikes me as being a little too... ah... _practical_ to involve himself too heavily in this sort of frivolity.”

“Even if there’s money to be made?”

“Not if it means competing against Edison’s men again. You remember that feud over the electric light bulbs.”

“That was three years ago. We’re manufacturing our own electric lights now. But I have one more thing to show you,” he tacked on to change the subject. “One more moving picture. This one’s more along the scientific lines. Purely experimental, and I made it myself with a new type of film I ordered by post from England. The specialized halide blend is sensitive to areas of the electromagnetic spectrum outside of what the human eye can perceive, and developing the film translates everything into visible light. Now watch this and tell me what you see.”

“Tony,” Bruce sighed, sounding halfway to exasperated, but at least he stayed in his chair as Tony threaded the next reel of film into the projector. And as the picture lit up in flickering gray on the far wall, Bruce leaned forward and frowned. “Is this inside your house?”

“The parlor, yes, filmed from the doorway. Now watch the piano.”

It looked like a flaw in the picture at first: a light, flickering and pulsing next to the piano. But then it moved. From one side of the keyboard to the other, the light slowly floated its way across the frame. It hovered in place a moment, and then began making its way back.

When the film strip came to an end a few seconds later and Tony switched the projector off again, Bruce was sitting so far on the edge of his seat he was barely still on it. “What was that?” he asked before Tony had a chance to say anything.

“What do you think it was?”

“I don’t know. I thought the film may have been damaged, but then it moved and... No, really, Tony, what is it? Some new trick?”

“What would you say...” Tony began slowly, “if I told you it was a ghost?”

“I’d say you’ve gone a bit mad,” Bruce replied with a smile and a little laugh. When Tony didn’t immediately admit to a joke, that smile fell. “You can’t be serious.”

“Very,” said Tony. “I told you that was a specialized film meant to capture images invisible to the human eye. And the film isn’t damaged or corrupted in any way. You can look at it closely if you like; it’s in perfect condition. And it wasn’t a trick. You saw that the film was made in my house, and you know I don’t have any of the equipment necessary to pull off any special effects like that. Therefore the only remaining explanation is... We just witnessed a film recording of my mother.”

As always happened when talk turned to the dead, Bruce looked instantly uneasy. “That’s not something to joke about, Tony.”

“I’m not joking, Bruce.”

“Your mother died-”

“When I was eleven,” Tony finished for him. “Which is why it would make sense for her to appear as a ghost, rather than in person, on my film. And do you know what that means?”

Bruce shook his still-uneasy head.

“It means that I have _scientific proof_ of the existence of ghosts. _Proof_ , Bruce! Not a theory, not circumstantial evidence, but _actual, visible proof_ that people can see for themselves!”

“One moving picture is hardly irrefutable proof.”

Shrugging, Tony began the job of winding the ghost film back onto its original reel. “True. But once I’ve collected five of these? Ten? Fifty? It’ll be the greatest scientific breakthrough since electricity.”

“Ah,” said Bruce. Leaning back in his chair, he fixed Tony with a knowing nod. “That’s your plan, isn’t it? Not just moving pictures, but scientifically proving the existence of ghosts?”

“Nobody else seems to be making a serious effort at doing it.”

“And you think your father will let you do _that_?”

Again, Tony stalled for as many seconds as he could manage before answering. “I’m going to try to convince him.”

“That sounds even less likely than convincing him to fund a picture studio.”

“Well,” Tony muttered. “I won’t know until I try, right?”

“Then I wish you the best of luck,” Bruce said, standing and reaching for his hat. “You’ll need an awful lot of it. And if you require any assistance in convincing your father...” He grinned. “Ask somebody else.”

Tony clapped him on the shoulder. “Always such a loyal friend. I’ll see you tonight, though? And Betty?”

“We’ll be there. I think she’ll enjoy this _Voyage dans la Lune_ , and I’ll be interested to see it again. See if I can better pick up on those tricks you mentioned.”

Tony walked Bruce to the elevator before returning to secure all the pieces of the projector. If only his father could be so easily drawn in to see the value and future potential in the science of moving pictures. Bruce was right that Howard Stark was a practical man. A little _too_ practical, in Tony’s experience. He chased after new ideas, yes, but only those he believed came with a strong guarantee for making money and improving industrial function. Applications with a value that lay purely in the realm of entertainment did not fit within the narrow parameters of what Howard saw as ‘useful’. Which was really a shame, since this vast, empty room with its flat white walls and few windows made for an ideal impromptu theater.

He wheeled the projector cart over to the elevator and checked his watch before pulling the door shut behind him. Nearly four-thirty. Good. His father typically worked until five, but hated taking late afternoon meetings, so should be free.

Howard Stark’s office lay on the second floor of the building, down a long corridor and past the ostentatious staircase leading to the first floor. And the first part of Tony’s assumption was correct: Howard was still in the building. He was, however, in a meeting in his office, with the door firmly closed. Tony would have to wait. Pushing the projector cart off to the side and out of the way, he took a seat in one of the chairs in the waiting area.

Oddly enough for so late in the day, he wasn’t alone.

The man sitting in the chair opposite barely looked up when Tony sat down. One brief glance, and then he returned to his book: something old-looking bound in faded blue leather, its cover and spine obscured by the man’s hands. A book like that would have looked out of place and ridiculous with anyone else, but in Tony’s eyes it matched this man perfectly well. Dressed all in black, from his tie to his shoes to the top hat resting on the table at his side, he looked like an illustration straight out of London fashion catalogue. But a fashion catalogue from twenty or even thirty years ago. His clothes, while fine and well made, were curiously out of date. His hairstyle as well. Long, soft curls fell down to just skim his shoulders, framing his pale white face with yet more black. The only meager bit of color about him seemed to be a faint tinge of pink in his lips and a flash of cold blue in his eyes.

Tony only realized he was staring after what had to be a full minute. Shaking his head to gather his wits, he leaned forward to address the man and find out who he was and what in the world he was doing at a place like Stark Industries. “Are you here to see Howard Stark?”

Those eyes were no less piercing than Tony expected when the man looked up. “No,” he said. “I’m merely waiting on my brother, who currently _is_ seeing Mr. Stark.”

“Ah,” said Tony, nodding along with the cadence of that foreign, British accent. Refined and elegant and old-fashioned to Tony’s ears, like everything else about this stranger. “Do you mind if I inquire as to the purpose of this meeting?” When the man visibly hesitated to answer, he stood up and extended his hand. “Sorry, I should have introduced myself first. I’m Tony Stark. Howard Stark’s son.”

“Tony Stark,” the man repeated, likewise standing to return the handshake. “Pleasure to meet you. I’m Loki Sharpe. I’m in town with my brother, Thor, who wished to speak with your father regarding... ah...” Again, he hesitated, but this time must have come to the ultimate conclusion that anything he told Tony, even potentially confidential plans, would be safe. “He’s here to discuss an investment opportunity.”

“In?”

“Energy storage. My brother and I are involved in the generation of electricity from wind turbines. He has recently invented a new type of battery storage cell: a great improvement over anything on the market today. He’s looking to license manufacturing rights in America.”

“Electricity, huh,” Tony said as he returned to his seat. If he had taken any time at all to try to guess why this Loki Sharpe character was sitting outside his father’s office, energy production and storage would have been nowhere near the top of the list. Anything to do with modern advancements just didn’t go with the image at all. A new type of horse-drawn carriage? Now that would have seemed more appropriate. “Is Stark Industries your first choice of investor?”

“As a matter of fact, it is,” Loki answered. “My brother did extensive research on your country’s top industrial manufacturers, and the name of Howard Stark continually presented itself as the best choice for an endeavor of this sort. Thor desires only the best, so therefore...” Loki smiled thinly. “Here we are.”

“Here you are,” Tony echoed back. And he had to look away for a second – glance over at the clock hanging on the wall, pretending to be interested in the time – just to break Loki’s unnerving, icy gaze. Those pale eyes looked at him too intently. Like the lens of a camera, indelibly recording everything he did, committing it to memory. “Well,” he said after a second, just to say something, “you’re right that we are the top industrial manufacturer. Definitely the top in the state of New York, and probably the top in America. Better than a lot in Europe too, I’d imagine.”

“You’re very likely right,” Loki agreed in a soft and strangely unreadable voice. It sounded as if he had something else to say on the matter, too, though it never came. What he said instead was, “That contraption you wheeled in... What is it? If you’ll pardon me for asking.”

“No, by all means, ask away,” said Tony. “It’s a film projector for moving pictures. A compact one, of my own design. Usually they’re huge and bulky – not that this one isn’t heavy enough – but I needed something I could more easily transport.”

“Are these moving pictures an interest of yours?”

“You could say that. I have a camera, and I’m in the process of creating my own film stock. I’ve had good luck with still picture slides, but film for the motion camera is a lot trickier. I want to figure out how to recreate some special film I ordered from London, actually. Lots of interesting new developments going on there. Have you seen any of it?”

Loki shook his head, and that same thin smile returned to his equally thin lips. “I’m afraid I’ve not been to London in... far too many years. My brother and I live in the north of England. Cumberland. It’s not what one might call a thriving center of modernity.”

“No theaters?”

“There may be, in Carlisle, which is the city nearest our estate. But even there, I go rarely.”

“Hmm.” Tony bobbed his head in an absent nod as he scoured his brain for any school geography lesson recollection of where Cumberland and Carlisle might be on a map. The names sounded distantly like something he had once heard, but he could not place them.

Loki picked up on his lack of recognition with a wry smirk. “Carlisle lies roughly at the halfway point between Liverpool and Glasgow.”

“Right,” said Tony. Those two names were much more familiar. “But you’ve never seen a moving picture?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“Then you should join me tonight.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself, and once he had said them... There was no respectable way to take them back. Or discontinue the invitation. “I’ve asked a few friends to come by to watch Georges Méliès’ _La Voyage dans la Lune_. I’m afraid it might ruin you for everything else out there, but if you have to start somewhere, you might as well start with the best.”

For a moment, Loki looked just as perplexed at the receipt of the invitation as Tony had felt by its spontaneous delivery. Then good manners took over and he bowed his head politely. “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Stark. I should be honored to attend.”

“Here,” Tony said, pulling a calling card out of his breast pocket. “My address. Come by around eight o’clock.”

“I believe I shall. Thank you.”

An uncertain pause threatened to settle between them as Loki took the card, leaving Tony with no idea of what to say next. Something about film? Something about electricity? Something about an entirely different, mundane topic that could safely occupy them while they waited? By a good stroke of luck, though, Howard Stark’s office door opened only a moment later. Two men emerged, in the middle of a conversation: Howard first, and then a tall, broad-shouldered, blond man carrying a large wooden box under one arm. That had to be Loki’s brother.

“-which you should consider over the next few days, and return to me with your answer,” Howard said as he held the door open.

“Thank you; I will,” the blond man replied. He wasn’t smiling. Neither he nor Howard looked as if his meeting had gone particularly well. “And I thank you for your time in meeting with me.”

“Good day,” said Howard, with the kind of quick, dismissive nod Tony had seen hundreds of times over the year.

“Good day,” the man returned, then gestured to his brother. “Loki?”

With barely a rushed “Good day” of his own, Loki bowed his head in a farewell that was directed primarily at Tony. And then the two of them were gone.

“Who was that?” Tony asked his father as soon as the pair of retreating footsteps could be heard on the stairs. Loki had given him some of the story, but his nosy nature needed more.

“Some English fool,” Howard grunted. Gesturing for Tony to follow, he retreated back into his office and took a seat at his desk to prepare a pipe.

That much, Tony had gathered already. “Oh?” he prodded.

“Thor Sharpe. _Sir_ Thor Sharpe. Baronet. Ridiculous name. Those English aristocrats always naming their children after historical heroes or figures from mythology... As if it will help them any. That was his brother out in the hall. Loki or something. Did you speak to him?”

“No,” Tony lied.

Howard nodded as he lit his pipe. “Just as well.”

“What did he want?”

“Money. What does anyone who comes to see me want? He’s looking for investors in this invention of his. A storage battery designed to hold captured wind energy. On the whole, not a terrible idea. Not a terrible design, either.”

“But?” Tony asked.

“But...” Howard paused to exhale a breath of smoke through pursed lips. “He was interested in a manufacturer for his design, which he wished to license to me. For every unit produced, Stark Industries would pay him royalties. I told him that was not how we operate our business. We manufacture industrial equipment of our own designs, which we constantly work to improve. I can’t commit myself to the long-term production of one battery model. I told him I may be interested in buying the patent outright, but only if he could first show me a full schematic blueprint. He refused. Said nothing, but I could tell he thought I would steal all his secrets.”

“Smart man,” said Tony. It wouldn’t have been the first time Stark Industries had ‘borrowed’ an idea.

“Indeed. In any case, that was my offer. He can take it or leave it. And I suspect he will leave it. Try to find a more agreeable contract elsewhere.” Another puff of smoke filtered up through Howard’s mustache. “He won’t be able to.”

“You’re going to stop him?” It would also not be the first time Stark Industries had done _that._

“No, I won’t have to,” said Howard. “I will, however, let it become common knowledge that I refused this young man. And I’ll let everyone know why. I don’t like him, Tony. I don’t like him, and I don’t like his quiet, shadow of a brother. There’s something off about them. I can’t put my finger on what, but it’s there. What makes a man travel all the way across the Atlantic to try to sell his wares? Why not sell in England, or continental Europe? Something isn’t right. And do you know what it all boils down to?”

Likely a lecture to do with work ethic, but Tony shook his head ‘no’ anyway because he knew Howard wanted to say it.

“ _Hard work,_ ” Howard predictably announced, thumping his fist on his desk to accent each word. “That man had an aristocratic name, and all the pretension and sense of unfounded entitlement to go with it. Nothing else. I can tell he hasn’t worked an honest day in his life, and yet here he comes with the audacity to ask me for money! To pay him for the privilege of having someone else labor to fulfil his plans! That’s not what this company is about, and it’s not what this country is about. We pride ourselves on hard work. I built this company myself, with my own sweat and my own willpower. Not on handouts. _Lord Sharpe_ would do well to follow that lead.”

A large cloud of smoke came on the heels of an even larger sigh. “I’m glad I raised you to know better, Tony. You’ve always been one to think things through for yourself and solve your own problems. Not one of these overblown idiots who only comes to ask me for money.”

“Right,” Tony murmured, mind immediately snapping back to the projector sitting out in the hall. “Thanks.”

“What brings you to see me today, anyhow? Did you come up with a solution to that engine configuration problem?”

“No, I’m still working on that. I, uh...” He gave himself a little shake and went with the first excuse that came to him. “I wanted to remind you that I’ve invited some friends to a gathering this evening after dinner. We’ll need the parlor. I wanted to show the new picture from France I told you about.”

“Yes, yes,” said Howard, waving his hand. “I’ll be dining with the Gilchrists and won’t be home until late.” And then, because he could never let any mention of Tony’s interests go without at least one derogatory comment, the follow-up to his answer rolled in alongside a gruff, throaty sound of contempt. “Motion pictures. Absurd. Well, I suppose I can’t fault you for this one frivolity. As long as you keep your head on straight and remember where your real talents lie, this little hobby of yours can’t hurt too much. Just keep an eye on where your real future lies.”

“Of course, sir,” Tony promised.


	2. Chapter 2

Pausing in his work, Tony sat up a little straighter and leaned back towards the door. He could have sworn he heard something, and a few seconds later, that was confirmed.

“Mr. Stark?” the housekeeper’s voice called from upstairs.

“Yes?” he called back.

“Your first guest has arrived, sir.”

It was difficult to see much in the dim, amber light of the darkroom, but Tony could just make out the numbers on the face of his watch. A little before seven thirty. That had to be Bruce arriving early. He took the stairs up from the converted cellar two at a time, and was about to open with a rude joke when he saw who was standing there in the foyer.

Not Bruce. Loki Sharpe.

“…Oh,” Tony said, catching himself and stumbling to a stop.

“Please accept my apologies for my untimely arrival,” Loki said to him before he could even manage to overcome his initial surprise. “It seems I vastly overestimated the amount of time it would take to walk from my hotel. I would have continued my stroll to save myself the embarrassment of being so early, but the weather is not in my favor.” He took a quick look back at the window next to the door, which was already covered in a spatter of fat raindrops. “I hope I’m not intruding on anything.”

Tony quickly gathered his wits enough to shake his head. “No, no worries. I was just down in my workshop wasting time on film experiments. Can I offer you any refreshment? Brandy? Coffee or tea?”

“Tea would be very much appreciated, thank you.”

The housekeeper dipped her head to excuse herself to go make the tea, leaving Tony on his own to entertain the unexpected guest. He cleared his throat. What was it about Loki that made him feel just slightly on edge? Maybe he could understand a little of what his father said earlier, though he would disagree with Howard’s assertion that something was ‘off’. It wasn’t ‘off’, it was just… different. Unusual, but not in a way that Tony would necessarily classify as negative. Loki had an air of strangeness about him, though instead of being repelled, Tony found himself intrigued. All his nerves hummed and balanced on the blade of a knife, but he was intrigued nonetheless.

He found himself staring again. And this time, Loki was staring back. He had to say something. “Dreadful weather tonight.” Dull, but adequate.

“Yes,” Loki replied. “I had hoped the afternoon’s clouds would blow over, but it looks like we’re in for a full night of rain.”

“Are you at the Avery Hotel?”

“I am, yes. It’s very comfortable.”

“How long do you plan on staying in town?”

“We’ve not yet decided. I suppose it will depend on whether or not Thor is successful in his business endeavors.”

And there was the topic Tony had no interest in exploring. He needed to steer this conversation safely elsewhere, and only one destination came to mind. “Are you at all interested in photography?”

Loki’s eyebrows rose at the question. “I can’t say that I ever have been, though I also can’t say that I’ve ever had any experiences with that particular art.”

“You’ve never been photographed?”

“Thor and I had a daguerreotype made once. But that was long ago. I don’t remember much outside of having to sit very still.”

“A daguerreotype!” Tony laughed. “Those have been obsolete for over sixty years. Why don’t you come downstairs with me: I’ll show you how things work in today’s world.”

With no objection, Loki followed Tony down the stairs and into his work area. It was, Tony had to admit, a bit of an overwhelming mess. Cameras of all shapes and sizes, half of them partially dismantled, lay strewn across two long tables, while jars and jugs of chemicals covered a third. And then there was the fourth table covered in even more bizarre nonsense, but Tony decided to focus only on the photography for Loki’s visit.

“Now,” he said, “a daguerreotype is the earliest photographic method, wherein the image is exposed onto a specially treated silver plate and then developed on that same plate. The process is time-consuming and makes only one copy of the image, which is incredibly fragile and must be protected behind glass. And as you can imagine, that single image on a silver plate protected by glass is expensive. Now let me show you the process I use today. Would you mind standing over by the wall there?”

Loki did so, but not without a suspicious crease to his brow. “Are you going to make a photograph of me?”

“Yes. To show you how easy it is with modern equipment.” He picked up one of the nearest cameras. “This camera is one I made for myself, designed to be easily loaded with a film slide. Which I also made myself, by applying light-sensitive emulsion to a square of celluloid. The film is encased in this light-proof metal cartridge, and when I slide it into the back of the camera-” The film moved into place with a satisfying click. “-the shell is pushed aside, allowing the film to be exposed when I open the shutter. Hold still and don’t blink. The exposure will take about two seconds.”

He balanced the camera on a tripod and pointed it at Loki, who still looked apprehensive about the whole thing but was, at least, making an effort at staying perfectly still. It would do. Pressing down the shutter button, he mentally counted to two, and then released. He pulled the film slide cartridge out of the side of the camera.

“And that’s how it’s done. I’ll develop the film later and make a print for you.”

“Does that take long?”

“No. Half an hour, maybe. I’d do it now, though there’d be no time to let the film and paper dry before the other guests arrived. Also I’d rather not risk getting chemicals all over myself when…” Right on time, the telltale sounds of a clinking tea tray began to make their way down the stairs. “Sounds like our tea is ready.”

It was easier to talk to Loki, Tony found, when he had something in his hands to occupy all his pent-up nervous energy. A camera. Or a teacup. He drummed his fingers against the bottom of the saucer, watching Loki as Loki in turn looked over the display scattered across the work room tables and made little comments or asked simple questions about each of the items.

“You have so many different cameras,” Loki said to him after taking a full tour of the tables. “Do they all have a distinct purpose?”

“Some of them, yes. Many are duplicates that I keep for parts or to tinker with and see if I can improve their function. But this one here, for example,” he said, gesturing to a model near the center of the table, “has a very narrow lens suited only to outdoor work on bright, sunny days. Whereas the lens on the one I used to take your picture is somewhat wider open and better for indoors. This one here, I’m working on an improved mechanical timer for the shutter that can be set to variable lengths. And the five over on the end are all for moving pictures. Only one of them works at the moment, however. I’ve, er… taken the others apart. To improve them.”

“What sort of improvements are you making?”

“I’m still trying to figure that part out.”

“And you said you make your film as well?” Loki asked.

Tony nodded even though Loki had turned back to look at the table and couldn’t see him. “Yes. I like trying to make everything on my own, as much as I can. And what I can’t make, I adapt. The celluloid base I have to order from a factory in New Jersey, but I mix my own emulsions and experiment with a little more of this, a little less of that, vary the halides... I want to create a faster film to take sharper pictures in low light. The one I used to take your photograph is one of my fastest, but it’s still two seconds to get a correct exposure indoors in this light. I want to bring my exposure time down to under half a second. Of course, much of that will be dependent on the lens, but the film itself still plays a large role.”

“Very interesting,” said Loki, giving no real indicator as to how much of that he really understood. “And what’s this over here?” he asked when he reached the table strewn with all of Tony’s non-photographic projects. “Some sort of... No, I can’t even begin to guess what these are.”

“Those are, um.” Clearing his throat to force a pause, Tony did his best to think up any way of explaining those particular items without sounding ridiculous. “Most of them are... electromagnetic field array spectrometers?”

Loki looked up from the table. “I beg your pardon. What was that?”

“Electromagnetic... er. They measure... ambient electromagnetic fields.”

“Is that part of photography?”

“No. It’s part of... It’s part of trying to prove the scientific existence of... Um. Of ghosts.”

“Ah, I see,” Loki replied, and went back to looking at the items on the table as if Tony had just said something completely normal. “Do you have many ghosts here?”

“Just one that I’m aware of,” said Tony. The turn this conversation had taken was making him feel more surreally lightheaded by the second. “Do you? In England, I mean.”

“Yes. Many.”

“Is that a truthful answer, or are you playing along to make me look foolish?”

Again, Loki looked up, his expression nothing but sincere. “Truthful. I do believe in ghosts, Mr. Stark. I’m afraid it would be impossible to live a life such as I have done and not believe. So I believe in them, and I would go so far as to say I have seen them.”

“Seen them!” Loki’s statement jolted through Tony’s body: the shockwave of an admission he never expected to hear. “Seen ghosts! Where? What did they look like?”

“Back home. Several times. They looked like... a distant reflection of humanity,” Loki said, carefully picking through his words. “Something that was once human, but no longer is. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to describe it any better. Like looking at a reflection in a rippling pool of water, I suppose. You know what the reflection is meant to be, but it’s not fully correct. There are parts missing. Parts out of place. A ghost has no warmth. And no soul. A ghost is not a spirit left behind on Earth. It’s... something else. The empty void left behind where body and spirit used to be. The energy that held the two together, now bereft of purpose. They are a remnant. An incomplete memory. The echoes of their bodies are wasting away. No organs, no muscle mass... no eyes.”

“Oh,” Tony whispered. The way Loki spoke played vividly through his imagination, but not in visual terms. Instead, the description conjured feelings: cold and uneasy, like being somewhere he shouldn’t be or looking at something he shouldn’t have seen. “That’s...”

“Not fit for polite conversation?” Loki smiled sadly. “I agree. We should return to more pleasant topics.”

“Right,” Tony said. “Why don’t we go back upstairs and I can give you a quick tour of-”                            

The housekeeper’s voice interrupted him before he could say, ringing down the stairwell with a new announcement. “Mr. Stark? Dr. Banner and Miss Ross have arrived.”

“Or we could go back upstairs and I could introduce you to my friends,” Tony offered as an alternative.

“I would like that,” said Loki. “Please lead the way.”

It occurred to Tony as the two of them went back upstairs that he had no idea how he might introduce Loki to Bruce. As his... friend? That seemed a little inappropriate, given they’d just met a few hours earlier and knew next to nothing about each other. But an introduction as ‘some stranger found outside Howard Stark’s office’ was equally unusable. Acquaintance? No, that still required a context. Maybe he could just skip the part where he mentioned how he knew Loki, and hope Bruce would not ask.

“Bruce!” Tony called out as he reached the front entryway. “So nice to see you again! It’s been, what, a little over three hours? I’ve missed you terribly!”

Bruce always had a way of smiling that looked like he was humoring Tony’s nonsense without actually condoning it. “I hope you don’t mind I’m a little early? I thought you could tell Betty about-” He froze when he spied Loki over Tony’s shoulder, speech cut off abruptly as his eyebrows jumped in surprise. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize we weren’t the first to arrive.”

“No worries, no worries,” Tony assured him. “Bruce, this is Sir Loki Sharpe.”

“ _Mr._ Loki Sharpe, actually,” Loki corrected, offering his hand to Bruce. “My elder brother inherited the title; I’m merely the second son of a minor baronet.”

“Well, that still sounds quite a bit more impressive than anything I could say about myself,” Bruce replied.

“Preposterous; you’re a doctor,” said Tony. “ _Mr._ Sharpe, this is my good friend, Dr. Bruce Banner. And his fiancée, Miss Elizabeth Ross.”

Betty held out her hand in turn. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Sharpe.”

“And how do you and Tony know each other?” Bruce, of course, had to ask.

But it was Loki who took responsibility for answering that question, before Tony could make a decision on what to say. “We met only earlier today, at Stark Industries. I was waiting for my brother to finish some bit of business when I met Mr. Stark in the corridor, and I commented on his projector. I’ve never had the privilege of viewing a moving picture before. Mr. Stark very kindly invited me here tonight.”

That was far better than anything Tony could have thought up: respectable, truthful, and offering just enough information that no additional questions would be required. He stayed with variations on that story as each of the other guests arrived. Each need to be introduced to Loki in turn: Captain Steve Rogers and Miss Margaret Carter, Mr. Harry Hogan, Mr. Clint Barton, and Miss Virginia Potts.

“Pepper,” she insisted when Tony gave her name. “Nobody calls me Virginia.”

Of everyone invited that evening, she seemed to take the most interest in Loki, asking a variety of questions on where he was from, how long he would be in town, and the nature of his visit. She sat next to him on the bench seat as Tony prepared the film reel, which made Tony feel... an odd mixture of emotions he had trouble picking through to identify. Whatever they were, the combination made his jaw clench, and he had to pointedly look away. He was being ridiculous. He knew that. He had never made any announcement of intentions toward Pepper, so she was free to speak to other men whenever she liked. And as for Loki, the two of them were barely friends; why should he feel anything about Loki anyhow? This was a social gathering. If Loki wanted to sit with Pepper instead of standing over here asking Tony questions about the projector...

No, he was being really ridiculous. He pushed his attention over to the film reel, feeding the lead end carefully into the projector’s advancement mechanisms.

“Ready?” Bruce asked.

“Ready,” Tony replied.

With Bruce at the light switch ready to darken the room, Tony forced what he hoped looked like an easy smile and stepped up to address the room. “My friends,” be began. “I invited you here tonight on the promise of witnessing something astounding. A new moving picture, straight out of France. I’m not exaggerating when I say it is the greatest I’ve ever seen, and I know you’ll agree with me. I won’t bore everyone by giving a long speech about the innovation and historical significance of this film, because I think those things will be evident on their own. So, with no further delay, may I proudly present to you: _La Voyage dans la Lune_ , by Georges Méliès.


	3. Chapter 3

 

Tony stared at the cards in his hand and tried not to think too hard about how bored he was an how he would rather be nearly anywhere else, doing anything else. He stifled a yawn, shuffled everything around into suits, and leaned forward to rest his elbows on the card table. “What’s trump?”

“Tony, you’ve asked that every hand so far,” Pepper told him with no lack of annoyance in her voice. “Can’t you please pay attention?”

“It’s diamonds,” said Bruce.

“I’ll pay attention if we can we can play something else,” Tony muttered. “Or better yet, _do_ something else. Why whist? We play whist every Sunday afternoon. It’s boring. I’m bored.”

Pepper stared him down with a look that probably should have made him feel bad, but somehow did not quite manage to meet its target. “Well I’m sorry we don’t all have access to French moving pictures to show our friends.”

“We could, though,” said Tony. “I could acquire them. Instead of Sunday cards, we could have Sunday pictures. I think that sounds a lot more exciting to me. Doesn’t it?” He looked at the faces sitting around the table: Pepper, staring back at him with a stony and disapproving expression, Betty, following Pepper’s example and thinning her lips as she held up her cards, and Bruce, who was suddenly very interested in his fingernails. “Well?” Tony prodded, directing his question mainly to Bruce.

“Well, um.” Coughing, Bruce picked up his cards and nervously ran his finger over the edges. “I know we did all enjoy the picture the other night, Tony, but... Today we’re here, and we’ve started the game already, and Pepper went to all the trouble of making doughnuts for us. Why don’t we continue with cards today, and next Sunday we can consider something else?”

“I think that sounds fair,” said Betty.

“Yes, fine,” Pepper agreed. “Next weekend we can think of something else to do, but today it’s whist. Betty? Your lead.”

Dumping his cards down on the table, Tony stood up. “If you say so. I think I’ll go for a drive instead.”

He took all of three steps toward the door before Pepper was up out of her chair and running after him. “Tony, you can’t just leave! We need four people!”

“Then ask one of your neighbors.”

“You’re acting like a child! What in the world is the matter with you today?”

“I’m bored,” he said, because that was all he could really articulate in a way that would make sense. In truth he was more than bored. He was frustrated. Irritated. Out of sorts and anxious. And sitting in Pepper’s family parlor, subjecting himself to the slow torture of death by whist was only compounding all of those feelings and making them exponentially worse. “I can’t play whist, Pepper. I can’t. It’s driving me mad. I can’t just sit there and... waste time. I need to _do_ something.”

“Do what?” she asked. “If you feel that strongly, then we don’t have to continue playing. But I don’t think it’s fair for you to up and leave the rest of us when we’ve made plans. Do you want to play something else? _Not poker_ ,” she snapped when he opened his mouth. She knew him too well. “Another card game, or a word game? Or we could all go for a walk to the park together.”

“Or we could have a séance,” Tony suggested.

The look Pepper gave him made it clear she thought he was insane. “A... séance? What made you think of that?”

“I don’t know,” said Tony, and that was at least halfway true. He’d never thought about a séance before in his life, and could only attribute the idea to the fact that he’d had nothing but ghosts on his mind for the past few days. Ever since speaking to Loki. “But it would be something to do, wouldn’t it? Something different? Something interesting?” He did not add, _for once_.

Pepper turned to judge the reaction of Betty and Bruce to the séance suggestion. Bruce, as Tony expected, looked his usual brand of skeptical yet accommodating. Betty, though, sat up straighter and nodded her head.

“I think that sounds quite interesting. I’ve never been to a séance before. Have you, Tony?”

Tony was forced to admit he had not. “No. But how hard can it be? We light some candles, hold hands, try to summon the dead... take photographs...”

“You only want to get your camera out, don’t you,” Pepper growled.

“Yes,” Tony said. “But I just thought of something. If I want to photograph the ghostly activity, we’ll need more people to complete the séance circle. At least one more. We should probably find somebody who knows what to do. Somebody with experience in the realm of the supernatural.”

“Do you know anyone?” asked Betty.

One person came to Tony’s mind. “Maybe. Pepper, why don’t you and Betty gather candles and draw the curtains? I have an idea. I’ll be back shortly.”

ooo

The Avery Hotel stood only a few short blocks from Pepper’s house, but Tony still drove to save time. The clerk at the front desk gave him Loki’s room number, and within five minutes of leaving Pepper he was knocking at the door to room seven and hoping like mad that Loki would be in.

He was in luck. “Mr. Sharpe,” he said the second the door opened. “I desperately need your assistance in a matter of the greatest importance.”

Loki blinked at him in what Tony recognized as very well founded surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry. That was rude. What I should have said was, good afternoon, Mr. Sharpe. It’s very nice to see you again, and I hope you will forgive my unannounced arrival?”

“Of course, yes,” Loki answered. “Good afternoon, Mr. Stark. I’m pleased to see you again as well. How may I help you?”

“This will likely sound absurd, but my friends and I wish to invite you to a séance.”

“A séance.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Right now.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you to invite me, but I’m not sure I follow the reasoning?”

“Well,” said Tony, “we need an expert to guide the proceedings, and considering how you are the only person I know who has ever seen a ghost, I think you are the most qualified.”

“I’m not an expert,” Loki protested, but Tony hardly cared.

“Nobody else knows that. You only need to pretend you know what you’re doing and we’ll all have a grand time. Come on; follow me.”

“I suppose I can,” Loki reluctantly agreed. “Let me leave a note for Thor, though. He’s currently out doing...”

Loki did not complete the thought to say what Thor was doing. Tony hardly cared; he impatiently waited as Loki took what seemed like an unusually long time to write a note, then quickly led the way out through the hotel. He stopped when Loki did out at the edge of the street.

Loki held onto him with a light grip on his arm. “Is that a...?”

“Olds model six,” he replied, looking from Loki to the automobile and back again with an indulgent grin. “Brand new, just bought it last month. Five horsepower engine and it hits a top speed of twenty miles per hour.   Although... I’ll admit I’m working on a few modifications that will allow it to go faster.”

“I see,” Loki said with a nod. “I was about to say ‘motorcar’, but your description is far more informative.”

“Have you ever ridden in one?”

“No. I’m afraid I’ve not.”

“Well then.” Tony stepped right up beside the wheel and gave the bench seat a pat. “Today is your lucky day.”

The entire drive back to Pepper’s house, Loki held onto the edge of the seat as if he might fly off at any minute. Tony forced himself to remain polite and hold back any teasing comments. At least until they reached their destination.

“I have half a mind to be insulted at seeing you so nervous,” he said as he unstrapped his camera case from the back. “I’m an _excellent_ driver, you know.”

“It’s not your ability that worries me,” said Loki. “The whole contraption seems rather dangerous.”

They climbed the steps to Pepper’s front door side by side, and Tony showed them in without bothering to knock. “On the contrary. The automobile is far safer than a horse-drawn carriage. With horses, your safety is left up to the whims of an animal. A horse can spook and bolt at any moment. But the automobile is a sophisticated machine, entirely under control of the driver. Trust me, Mr. Sharpe: a few years from now? Horses will be a distant memory.”

He hung his hat on the tree by the door just as Pepper appeared around the corner from the parlor. “Tony? Oh good; you’re back.” Her eyes fell upon Loki with an expression that Tony couldn’t fully read. Surprise, partially, but also something else that could have been self-conscious satisfaction. Something that made her fidget with her necklace and smooth back her hair, and something that made Tony suddenly regret his choice to bring Loki here. “Mr. Sharpe. Welcome.”

“Miss Potts.” He held out his hand to take Pepper’s, lightly kissing her fingers and earning a slightly wider smile than the coy, close-lipped smirk she’d allowed so far. “Mr. Stark did not mention when he came to collect me that we would be calling on you today, otherwise I would have brought that book I mentioned the other night.”

“Nor did Mr. Stark tell me he was going to collect you,” Pepper replied, raising an eyebrow in Tony’s direction. “However-”

“However, we’re wasting time standing around here,” Tony interrupted. Herding them both towards the parlor, he took care to situate himself between them. A bodily shield between Pepper and Loki. “Is everything ready for our séance? I think this will be exciting.”

As instructed, Pepper and Betty and Bruce had prepared the room: heavy curtains drawn across the windows blocked out all natural light, and only a cluster of candles illuminated the table. Tony set his camera case on the floor and pulled out the tripod to begin assembling all the equipment.

“You remember Dr. Banner and Miss Ross, of course,” he heard Pepper say as he clipped the tripod’s legs in place. “Now would you care for a doughnut, Mr. Sharpe? Or lemonade? I’m not so certain those refreshments are appropriate to a séance, but we had earlier been playing cards and I’m afraid I have nothing else prepared.”

“Wine?” Tony called out from his crouched position on the floor. “Wine sounds appropriate to a séance.”

He could all but feel Pepper’s disapproving frown aimed at his back. But it was Loki’s voice, not Pepper’s, that spoke up. “Mr. Stark is correct. Wine is traditionally served at a séance. But don’t trouble yourself, Miss Potts. If you have wine, it would be lovely, but if not, we can do without.”

“Oh,” said Pepper. “I shall... have to see what I can find.”

The sound of her skirt swished out of the room, followed by the creak of floorboards as Loki knelt down on the other side of the camera case. “Is that the truth about the wine?” Tony whispered. “Or are you making things up to get on my good side?”

“You’re the one who claimed I was an expert at conducting séances, Mr. Stark,” Loki whispered in return. “Are you insinuating that I’ve just lied to poor Miss Potts and made up a fraudulent excuse to drink wine at three in the afternoon? That’s very ungentlemanly of you.”

Tony suppressed a smile. “Forgive me. I mean to insinuate no such thing. You are the expert, Mr. Sharpe. I shall follow your lead and drink all the wine that is placed in front of me.”

Pepper returned with the wine just as Tony finished with his camera equipment, and poured a glass for everyone at the table before taking her seat. Between Loki and Bruce. Annoyance flared in Tony’s chest, but to be reasonable, what could he do about it? Loki sat with his back to the fireplace, and it made the most sense for Pepper and Betty to sit at his sides while Bruce took the seat opposite. And now they were about to sit in the dark holding hands and drinking wine... and talking to ghosts. Of all those things, why did it seem like holding hands was the most unacceptable part?

“Are we ready?” Loki asked.

The camera was ready. Tony was nearly ready. “One second,” he said. He grabbed the dainty glass of wine Pepper had poured for him and threw it all back in one mouthful. “There. Now I’m ready.”

Holding out his arms to link hands with Pepper and Betty, his strange clothing blending into the mantle of the fireplace behind him as candles cast shadows over his pale face, Loki looked like some mysterious figure out of a Renaissance painting. “Now I want us all to close our eyes,” Loki said, “and concentrate on listening to my voice. Do not let your minds wander. Listen to me. Concentrate all energy on me. And please remain silent and solemn,” he added as Betty stifled a giggle. “We must all do our best to believe in the spirits we are attempting to speak with. The stronger our belief, the greater our chance of success.”

Tony pushed a film slide into the camera and looked at the faces sitting around the table. Loki, for all his claims to have never held a séance before, looked perfectly comfortable. Betty, to his left, kept her lips bitten together to keep from laughing. Bruce sat with his back to the camera, but Tony guessed he probably either looked bored or would be copying Loki’s serene studiousness. And Pepper’s face bore a look of intense concentration, her lips pursed and her brow furrowed.

“Miss Potts,” Loki said. “Are there any others in the house besides us?”

“No,” Pepper answered. “My parents are out calling on family friends, and my sister with them. We will be alone until after supper.”

“Good. That will make it easier to sense the coming and going of spirit energy. Now everyone please take a deep breath in... and out. And again in... and out.”

Tony pressed the shutter button, holding it down for several seconds as he half-listened to Loki’s opening exercises. This would be the establishing picture of the room before any ghosts appeared, for comparison purposes.

“Now Miss Potts,” Loki asked as Tony loaded a second slide into the camera. “To your knowledge, has anyone passed away in this house?”

“Yes. My aunt Helena. She was my father’s sister and died of a fever when she was sixteen. And both of my grandparents on my father’s side. Margaret and Theodore Potts. Both died peacefully in their sleep.”

“Thank you,” said Loki. “That’s very helpful. Now let us see if any of them wish to speak with us today.”

In all honesty, Tony thought holding a séance would be far more interesting. In truth, the _idea_ of a séance – the romance of ghosts, the draw of the occult, the thrill of doing something just a little bit wicked that would surely get them into trouble if Pepper’s parents found out – far outshone the reality. Because the reality was that Tony stood off to the side taking the occasional photograph and trying not to yawn as Loki spoke to Pepper’s deceased aunt Helena in very slow and repetitive phrases. Occasionally he heard Bruce stifle a yawn as well, or Betty still trying not to giggle.

He moved the tripod to take the next photograph from a slightly different angle, framing Loki and Pepper from between the shoulders of Bruce and Betty. In the background, Loki’s voice floated above the sound of the film slide being pulled from the camera: “Helena. If you are here, give us a sign. Helena. Let us know if you are in the room. Helena. We want to know that you are here with us.”

Reaching down to grab a new slide from the camera case, Tony suddenly felt the oddest sensation of cold air slowly creeping up his back. Not a draft or a wind gust, but more like a cold puddle seeping through his clothes and crawling up the length of his spine. With a gasp and a shudder he stood up. And was just in time to see Betty react as if something had just touched her shoulder.

“Oh!”

“Miss Ross, did you feel something?” Loki asked.

“Yes,” Betty replied. “I felt... I’m not sure. My shoulder just became very cold, as if a cold hand were placed there. And my... and my chest feels very heavy.”

“So does mine,” said Pepper. “It feels like somebody is pressing right below my collar bone.”

“Is the pressure cold?” Loki asked.

They both answered in unison. “No.”

Tony shoved the new slide into the camera slot as quickly as he could and immediately pressed the shutter button. If they had any ghost activity at all, this would be it. He counted silently to eight in his head, then released the button, pulled the slide, and reached for another. And then another. And a third. It was only during the fourth exposure that Pepper’s shoulder’s sagged with a sigh.

“It’s gone,” she said. “I don’t feel anything any more.”

“Helena?” Loki asked. “Are you still with us?”

No-one made a sound. The room was so silent Tony could hear the tiny hiss of the burning candle wicks.

Loki released his hold on Pepper’s and Betty’s hands. “I think that enough for today.”

ooo

“Well, Betty enjoyed that,” Bruce said as he helped Tony strap the camera case onto the back of the Olds. “Then I overheard her ask Mr. Sharpe if we could do this again sometime soon, and he told her it was unwise to speak too often to ghosts lest they decide to become a permanent feature in the house. And I think she liked that even better.” Bruce shook his head. “Where did you find this man, Tony? Honestly.”

“Honestly, he told you the whole store the other night,” Tony answered. In his peripheral vision, he saw Loki and Betty appear in the doorway. Betty kissed Pepper’s cheek farewell, and Loki kissed her hand again. Tony turned fully away. “His brother had a meeting with my father, and we found ourselves talking about moving pictures. That’s all.”

“Yet he’s an expert in ghosts?”

“Before you arrived the other night, I mentioned to him my ghost-reactive film project, and he spoke to me of his own experiences. There’s nothing peculiar going on here, Bruce. I just happened to meet him, and he happened to share a few of my interests.”

Nodding, Bruce leaned against the camera case to wait as Betty finished her conversation at the door with Pepper and Loki. “You don’t find anything... odd about him?” Bruce asked in a low voice. “Something not quite right?”

The defiant part of Tony’s mind jumped into action at those words: nearly the same words Howard Stark had used to describe the Sharpe brothers. “No,” Tony replied. “In fact I don’t.”

“Oh come on, Tony. The way he speaks? The way he dresses? The way he acts? The way he never looks anyone in the eye for more than a split-second?”

“He speaks like he’s from England, and he dresses like... Well, he told me he’s from a very remote area. They obviously don’t keep up with latest fashion there. As for the way he acts, I promise you he’s held eye contact with me for more than a second.” Outside Howard Stark’s office. He had, hadn’t he? Yes. Tony recalled it vividly. Loki had stared at Tony with such intensity it made him uneasy. But not in the way Bruce described. Nothing about Loki’s haunting eyes had made Tony think there was anything strange about Loki. On the contrary: they conjured feelings that Tony was the strange one. That Tony, if left alone too long under the power of those eyes, would do something impulsive and terrible.

Bruce sighed. “Well.   Be careful Tony.”

The irritation in Tony’s chest welled up like fire in a forge. Why in the world was he so angry at his friends today? Everything they did and everything they said grated on his nerves, justifiably or not. “Careful of what?” Tony snapped.

Without bothering to answer, Bruce shook his head and walked away.

“Come on,” Tony said to Loki as Bruce took Betty’s arm. “I’ll drive you back to the hotel.”

“Is something the matter with your friend Dr. Banner?”

“No,” Tony lied. “He just refuses to believe in ghosts.”

Loki nodded, watching the retreating figures of Bruce and Betty. “Some people choose not to believe, which I understand. Especially those who demand a scientific basis for everything.”

“Which is why our work today is so important.” Tony patted the camera case before climbing up into the driver’s seat. “If these photographs show proof of ghostly activity, they’ll act as yet more evidence – scientific evidence – to prove that ghosts do indeed exist.”

“How long will it take you to find out if the photographs worked?”

“Not too long. I need only a few minutes to develop each slide, and I can make prints as soon as they’re dry.”

He hesitated there before saying anything more. There was a question in his mind, but it wasn’t something he was sure he wanted to ask. Or if it was something he wanted to ask, he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear Loki’s answer. In case that answer happened to be ‘yes’.

He asked anyhow. “Would you... Hm. That is to say, are you interested in helping me to develop the film?”


	4. Chapter 4

It was the last four slides that interested Tony the most out of the ten he took during the séance. He started on number seven out of ten, carefully extracting the cellulose square from its casing within the safety of a light-proof bag, and loading it into a developing chamber to which he added the necessary chemical mixture. The timer ran down too slowly for his liking, but once it did, he dumped the chemicals and rinsed the slide. Then finally held up the finished negative to the light hanging from the ceiling.

Looking at what it showed, his heart began to pound faster. “Look,” he whispered, beckoning Loki over. “Look at this! Right in the middle of the picture: this dark shape. Does it look like anything to you?”

Loki stared for a few seconds but eventually shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what I’m meant to see?”

“This here.” Tony pointed at the shadowy figure in the center of the frame. “It can be difficult to understand the image if you’re not accustomed to looking at negatives. So what you see here is that the pale figures are you and Pepper and Bruce and Betty sitting at the table. You can make out the shapes of your heads and shoulders. And these little black spots are the candle flames. Once the image is printed everything white in the negative will be black and everything black will be white. The negative is reversed. Like when you look at a daguerreotype from the wrong angle. But you see hovering above the candles? We have this large dark shape.”

“I’m sorry, Tony, it looks too strange to me. I don’t see what you do.”

“Alright.” Grabbing a towel, Tony gently patted the film dry as best he could. “Let’s print this. Right now. Do you mind pulling that red switch over on the wall? And turning off the main lights?”

“If the lights are off, how do you see... Oh.”

In place of the usual bright yellow electric bulbs overhead, as soon as Loki switched the lights off the room was bathed in dim amber. Just enough to see the basic shapes of what lay on the tables., like the diffused light of a single candle.

“My film is sensitive to all light and must be handled in absolute darkness,” Tony explained. “But photo paper is sensitive only to light on the blue end of the spectrum. The red end of the spectrum is safe and does not cause the paper to react. So we can use the amber light to see while we make prints.”

“How fascinating,” Loki murmured.

“Indeed. Now watch this and prepare to be truly amazed.”

The print itself took only a moment to expose with a beam of bright blue light. Tony mixed a tray of the developer and submerged the photo paper, telling Loki to watch the reaction. Slowly, dark shapes began to bloom and spread and solidify into pieces of an image. Much of it was black, as Tony knew it would be based on the lightness of the negative. But the darkness did not spread fully to the center of the picture. Instead it traveled around, forming the swirls of Pepper’s hair or the shape of Loki’s head, barely distinguishable from the mantle behind. The center remained pale.

Pale and hazy, in the indistinct, blurred shape of a woman floating horizontally above the table.

Loki gasped as soon as the picture had formed enough to show what they needed to see. “Is that...”

“It’s blurry,” Tony explained, moving the paper over to the stop bath. “Can’t be helped. I had to expose this over six seconds, and things move around a lot in that time. But you can still see what it is. Now does it look like something in particular to you?”

“A woman,” Loki whispered. “It looks like a woman. Wearing a nightgown. Her long hair is hanging down, unbound, and she’s reaching an arm out to Pepper.”

“Exactly what I see, too.”

“Do you think this is Helena?”

“Who knows?” Tony asked. “Helena, or another ghost. But whoever she is... we have her picture.”

“We have her picture,” Loki quietly repeated.

Loki kept his eyes on the photograph, but Tony kept finding his gaze lured upward, stealing secretive glances at Loki’s face. The amber-gelled bulb overhead cast its smooth light over Loki’s skin, making it glow like an ember. The sharp, precise lines of his profile stood out against the darkness of the room as perfect as any Roman statue. And Tony was suddenly stricken with the absurd urge to reach up and touch Loki’s face: to feel the velvet skin beneath his fingertips and trace the shadowed line of that regal cheekbone. He curled his hand into a fist and just managed to look away as Loki turned his head.

“I should, um,” Tony muttered, “I should get to work on developing the rest of the film slides.” Coughing to clear his throat, he gestured for Loki to turn the regular lights back on. “You can get the switch now. The print is finished.”

“Of course,” said Loki. He stared at Tony as he said those quiet words.   The same stare Tony remembered from the other day: as penetrating as God’s own eyes looking straight into his soul.

Tony grabbed the nearest film slide and began folding it into the light-proof bag, dismantling the case and loading it into the developing container. “I’m going to show these to my father,” he said, because he had to say something. He had to come up with some safe distraction of a conversation topic before he let himself do anything stupid under Loki’s hypnotic spell. “What I have here in this work room is adequate, but for the kind of projects I eventually want to undertake, it’s not enough. I think I mentioned to you the other night that I like to prepare my own film, but I have to do that in this cramped room in small batches. That’s why I have to use the individual slides instead of multi-exposure rolls: I just don’t have the ability to emulsion-coat a full roll evenly enough. If I ever want to really go anywhere with innovations to the science of photography, I need an industrial venue. I need machines dedicated to film stock manufacturing. Machines to make film roll casing. And ultimately machines to manufacture parts for cameras, both for still and moving pictures, according to my designs. Down here, I only have a hobby. Which is what my father things this is. But if I can just get him to see the potential and invest in a photographic branch of Stark Industries...”

“With photographs of ghosts?” Loki asked, sounding somewhat confused.

“Well... that would be only a small part of things. Formulating emulsions more sensitive to ghost activity would be, unfortunately, a novelty. But I’m going to keep these in to show him what can be done. My ghost film isn’t perfect yet, but it’s coming along. I finished this batch two days ago based on a sample from London, and it’s already testing better than my last attempt. With a few adjustments it’ll be better still. But you’re right. Ghost pictures won’t help me very much. The portfolio I show him should focus more on the speed of my film for indoors and outdoors, and the automated shutter timer I’m working on.”

“No, I didn’t mean to be ‘right’,” said Loki. “I think this ghost photograph is... it’s astounding. The only thing I’m uncertain of is how much success you would have selling this film on a wide scale. Most people do think of it as a novelty. But there are some, I believe, who would pay you very well as a ghost photographer. You don’t need your father’s money or an industrial operation. If you can produce these slides at a rate to fulfil your own needs, you could have a small but viable business photographing the sort of séances we did today for wealthy fools in search of new forms of entertainment.”

“Maybe,” Tony slowly replied. He unfolded the bag and set the development container aside, but did not immediately reach for any chemicals. That would be a path he could take: purveyor of unique entertainment, attempting to take photographs of ghosts for anyone interested in paying for the privilege. It would be a small business, as Loki said. Small but potentially viable. The question was, then: would he be satisfied with ‘small’? How possible would it be to scale back everything he had planned in order to fit within the limitations of what he could accomplish on his own with only what he had in front of him right at that moment?

“I wish I knew how to use any of this,” Loki said before Tony could vocalize that concern. He had his hand on one of the numerous cameras littering the work area, gently tracing the edges of its shape. “See what images I could capture back home... Of all the spirits of those who have lived and died over the centuries, some still linger.”

Tony nodded. “You told me you’ve seen them.”

“Yes. A few.”

“Well, if I do decide to take up ghost hunting or séance photography, I think England or continental Europe would be my first destination. All the history, the stories, the famous hauntings... A picture of Anne Boleyn would be a lot more interesting than a picture of Pepper’s aunt, don’t you agree?”

“Perhaps, yes,” said Loki, smiling that enigmatic smile of his. “And you’d always be more than welcome to begin your hunt at the Sharpe estate, where I can all but guarantee you a satisfactory amount of ghostly presences.”

“Is that so?” Tony asked.

“You’d run out of film before you ran out of ghosts.”

“Tempting offer.” Highly tempting. But also, as his father would say, highly irresponsible. What kind of witless idiot would run off to England on the promise of chasing ghosts? Especially when one had such an allegedly bright future back home in Buffalo? He too picked up a camera, toying with the shutter button and the film advancement key. “That would be an ideal hunting ground. However, I think I should focus on something a little more... er... socially acceptable for the time being. Establish myself in the arena of film and camera manufacture. Perhaps build a moving picture studio. Those things, I know I can sell. Ghosts? Not so much.”

“But where do your true interests lie?” asked Loki.

Tony dared to look up from the camera. Just for a moment, to catch a glimpse of Loki standing half-shadowed in the workroom’s uneven light.

Where indeed did his true interests lie? From the writhing knot beginning to form in his stomach, he found he could not safely answer that question.

“Moving pictures,” he lied. “I do want my own studio. But first I need to make better film, and better cameras. And for all of those things, I need my father’s investment.”

“Then I hope you are able to convince him.”

ooo

Howard Stark looked skeptical at best, sighing and pacing with all the good grace of a bull in a pen, as Tony laid out an array of photographs across the length of the office table. Howard had never been known as patient man. Or even a man with good manners when it came to the discussion of unsolicited business proposals. But Tony, who liked to think of himself as having a well developed immunity to Howard’s moods, said nothing while carefully clipping little squares of paper to the corners of the first ten pictures. Each paper bore a series of numbers. He kept his back turned until the entire collection of photographs and equipment had been arranged. Only then did he look up and address his father.

“What does this look like to you?”

Mercifully, Howard did not answer him with ‘a waste of time’. “A bunch of photographs.”

“Look at the pairs of pictures over here. They’re nearly identical, but compare the one on the left to the one on the right. Do you notice anything?”

Howard’s eyes scanned the table for a few scant seconds. “Not much. The picture on the right may be a little clearer. Why?”

“This is a comparison test I did,” Tony explained. “The pictures on the left were all taken using an Eastman Kodak pocket camera and their film. The pictures on the right were taken using the same base camera with a few of my own modifications, loaded with my blend of film. Now it’s true the pictures on the right are slightly sharper, but there’s not a big difference. Until you look at the numbers. These here,” he said, pointing to the first number on each paper, “indicate the shutter speed in seconds to get the correct exposure. The Kodak pictures were taken with a shutter speed of one fortieth of a second. Fast, but not ideal. It’s not always possible for a subject to stay still enough or for a photographer to hold the camera steady enough to achieve a perfectly sharp photograph at that speed, which is why the Kodak pictures look a little blurred. My film, in the same bright, outdoor lighting conditions, can achieve a correct exposure at one one-twentieth of a second. Three times faster. Meaning the pictures come out sharper.”

He leaned over the table, pulling forward two pictures from the end of the row. “Here. The difference is most strikingly illustrated in these: two photographs of a boy walking a dog. In the Kodak picture, both the boy and the dog are blurred. Especially the dog’s legs and tail. But on my film, the blur is reduced to a slight fuzziness around the dog’s legs and the boy’s left foot. So now tell me: if you were a father taking a picture of this boy for an album of family photographs, which film would you want to use?”

“I would not waste my time taking pictures of boys and dogs,” Howard rather predictably answered as he wandered over to the bank of windows to stare down at the street below. “What are you trying to accomplish by showing me all this, Tony?”

“I’m trying to show you that I’ve made a product that surpasses – by a considerable margin – the quality of what’s considered to be the best on the commercial market right now,” Tony answered with as much confidence as he could rally. And he pushed on before his stomach could knot itself at the prospect of the next proposal: “Therefore, I think we should manufacture it on a large scale.”

Howard glanced back over his shoulder, probably just to shoot Tony a disapproving look. “Manufacture? Film?”

“Yes, film,” Tony said. “And cameras, to appeal to everyday people with no photographic experience. Copy what Eastman is doing, but with a better product. Better film. Better cameras. Something easy to use that families can take on holiday. Maybe even moving picture cameras for the average person.”

“And how much did that Kodak camera of yours cost?”

Tony looked at the wall to avoid his father’s eyes. “That has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. The point I’m trying to make is-”

“How much, Tony?”

“Seventeen… fifty…” Tony muttered through a sigh.

Howard snorted and almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of that number. “Seventeen dollars and fifty cents!” he said. “How many of your ‘average’ people pay that much for a novelty item? How many people, other than Anthony Stark, infamous waster of his father’s hard-earned money?”

“But what if I could reduce that cost?” Tony asked. “What if I could find a way to manufacture a camera that we could sell for less than ten dollars?”

“It’s still a novelty. People just won’t pay ten dollars, or even five, for something so frivolous.”

“Electricity and indoor plumbing used to be a novelty not that long ago,” Tony countered. “They seem to have caught on.”

“Because they improve the quality of life’s basic necessities,” said Howard. “Now if you invent a better and more cost-effective electrical light bulb? _Those_ I would manufacture.”

“You’re not even listening to me!”

Howard shook his head. “No, I am. I am listening to you, Tony. But you’re not listening to me. You’ve not been listening to me for the last several years, when I’ve given you repeated opportunities to channel your talents into making me something useful. Stark Industries is in the business of manufacturing industrial machinery. I want to push into household appliances, and I think you could help me out with that. How many people do you think would pay seventeen dollars and fifty cents for a gas stove? More, I’m sure, than would pay that same amount for a camera.”

Tony felt his jaw clench. “You want me to build you a gas stove?”

“Yes. I’d be very happy if you came to me with something I could actually sell. Advertise it as safer to operate and easier to regulate the temperature than wood- or coal-fire. You build me a gas stove that any idiot can use, and even throw in an optional electrical ignition to make it completely foolproof, and I’ll not only manufacture it but also pay you a commission on all units sold.”

“Hm,” was all Tony said in reply. Behind him on the table, the comparison pictures he prepared still lay two by two in neatly organized rows. He turned to look at them, and the rest of the assembled examples he hadn’t even yet explained. The ghost photographs. Pictures he had done at the séance, and others he had taken with experimental blends of film to varied success. All carefully displayed, and all next to worthless as far as Howard Stark was concerned. “I don’t… want to design gas stoves,” he finally said after an uncomfortable moment of silence. “Or anything else like that. I don’t want to make household appliances, or industrial machinery.”

“And why not?” Howard asked in a tone of voice Tony recognized as being full of forced patience.

“Because it’s boring,” Tony answered. There was no way he could win this argument; he knew that. So why not let the truth fly free for once? “Anyone can do that. If you tell them to, anyone on your engineering team could come up with an adequate gas stove design. Anyone can follow your orders and come up with what you want. But that doesn’t interest me. At all.”

“I suppose you would rather waste all your time and skill on photography?”

“I wouldn’t consider it ‘waste’, but yes,” said Tony. “At least I’d be doing something new and different. And something I find exciting.”

“Instead of something you find practical?” Stepping away from the window, Howard crossed the room to put his hands on Tony’s shoulder in a gesture Tony was sure was meant to seem fatherly and affectionate. It felt somewhat more like a murky, smoke-shadowed threat. “Tony, you’re twenty-five years old now. I’ve been lenient with you. I’ve let you spend your time as you wished, following whatever fancies came into your head, but that can’t go on forever. It’s past time you started acting like the grown man you are instead of the irresponsible child you insist on being.”

“Irresponsible,” Tony muttered through his teeth as the barbs of the word sunk under his skin. “That’s really how you see me?”

“I find it hard to label you otherwise. I sent you to university for the best education my money could buy, and what have you done since you returned?”

“Let me see,” said Tony. “I’ve applied the knowledge I gained in both mechanical engineering and chemistry to create and improve upon camera equipment and film emulsions? Not that you seem to care, so you’ll just have to trust me that this is a significant achievement.”

Howard dropped his hands. “I sent you to school so you could gain the technical and critical thinking skills necessary to help me here. So far, you’ve done very little of that despite being given a monthly salary from Stark Industries.”

“You pay me less than you pay the draft clerks.”

“Because you do far less work than the draft clerks!” Howard snapped, finally shedding his false air of concern. He returned to his desk and opened the drawer to fish for his pipe, huffing in annoyance as he did. “No more, Tony,” he said. “I’ll give you one month. One more month of nonsense, free to waste all the time you have. But one that month is up, you will take a regular position here as a design engineer. You will report to the office every day, you will do what I tell you to do, and you will design products that we can reasonably produce and sell. I will pay you an appropriate wage, and you can pursue your little hobbies in your free time on your own dollar. Is that understood?”

“Sounds dull,” said Tony.

Howard tapped the tobacco down into his pipe. “I think it sounds very reasonable. Far more than you deserve.”

Again, Tony looked down at the photographs spread across the table. “You’re not going to listen to anything I have to say, are you?” he muttered.

“I’m listening. But listening and agreeing are two very different things.”

“No, you’re…” Rubbing his hands over his eyes, Tony turned to face his father. “You don’t understand anything I say, do you?”

Howard answered only with a deepening frown.

“I don’t _want_ to work for you designing gas stoves or metal presses or boilers or motors or any of that. I don’t _care_ about those things. They’re a waste of my time! Yes, I could do it. I could do it easily. But I’m telling you now that anything I made for you would be merely adequate. It would function and it would make you money, but it would be neither innovative nor exceptional because _I would not care enough to make it so._ Is that what you want? Mediocrity? Or would you rather _listen_ to me and let me do something that I know I can do well? Not just well: better than anyone else? I’m guaranteeing you newest and the best. Look.”

Gathering up a handful of photographs from the table, he slapped them down one by one on Howard’s desk. “Film with an outdoor exposure time of _one one-twentieth of a second_. Film with an indoor, dim light exposure time of _under two seconds_. Film that can capture electromagnetic activity on a light spectrum _beyond what the human eye can see, and translate it into a visible image_. And this is only what I’ve been able to do in a cramped workroom in our cellar, by myself, with hobbyist materials I’ve had to order by post! What if I had a proper space? And dedicated assistants? And the right equipment? Do you know how much further I could go?”

“Then why don’t you?” Howard asked, staring coolly back at him.

“Why don’t I what?”

“Why don’t you go ahead? If you’re so certain of your idea’s success, why don’t you begin right now? You don’t need my approval.”

Without speaking, Tony held his father’s gaze. He didn’t need Howard’s approval. Both of them knew that. What he needed, however, was Howard’s money. And both of them also knew that.

“Well?” Howard prompted.

“All I’m asking,” Tony said in a low voice, “is for you to let me use the empty space on the fourth floor, and for a small investment to help-”

“And what do you consider a ‘small investment’, Tony? One hundred thousand dollars? Two hundred? Five?”

“I don’t know yet. I need to look into costs of-”

Again, Howard interrupted him. “Then I’m afraid I simply can’t take your proposal seriously at this time. You have no business plan, no budget, and no experience…”

“I have a _product,_ ” Tony insisted.

“That’s not enough. From my perspective, this is a bad investment. Any man of sense would agree. You’re asking me to give you money when you have no concrete plan for what you’d do with it. Had you come here today with a realistic outline of all your projected costs and revenues-”

“You’d still have refused me,” Tony said, talking right over Howard as Howard had done to him so many times before. “Wouldn’t you?”

Pausing to light his pipe, Howard let wordless seconds tick by before finally answering. “Yes. I’m sure I would have. But at least you would have shown a lick of business sense. Coming to me like this you’re no better than that Sharpe fellow from the other day. Is that what you want to be?”

_Maybe._ The answer sounded loud and clear in Tony’s head even if he didn’t say it outright. What was wrong with being like ‘that Sharpe fellow’ anyhow? Thor, at least, was forging his own path and trying to make something of his invention. And Loki was right there beside Thor as a support. Just as he had been for Tony down in the cellar workroom, encouraging him to follow his passions.

How could somebody like Loki, somebody he only met days earlier, believe in Tony’s future so much more thoroughly than his own father?

“Alright then,” Tony said. One by one, he began to gather the photographs back into a stack, and replace the camera pieces back into the box he used to bring them. “I can see you’re not interested, and never will be. I apologize, _father_ , for thinking you might even pretend to care about what I do. So sorry for wasting your time. I’ll see myself out.”

“And what?” Howard asked. “You’ll go home? Just like that?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then where are you going with all that rubbish?”

Tony didn’t even bother to turn around when he reached the doorway. All he did was look back over his shoulder, halfway catching Howard’s seated figure with one eye. “I think I’ll go to England,” he said, and the decision solidified in his mind the second the words were out of his mouth. “To look for ghosts.”

ooo

The drive to the Avery hotel did nothing to pull down his high-flying spirit. Nor did the quick walk through the hotel’s hallways, or the knock on the door to room seven. In fact that only made Tony’s heart feel lighter, and when Loki opened the door... Everything fell into place, is if it were the only thing in the universe that was truly meant to be.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Sharpe,” Tony said, bowing as he pulled off his hat. “I do hope that invitation to join you in your haunted manor is still open?”


	5. Chapter 5

The RMS Oceanic loomed larger than life against the pier, dwarfing her hundreds of eager passengers as they scuttled insect-like up the walkways. Tucking his cargo claim ticket inside his coat pocket, Tony grinned at the sight. England now lay just over a week’s journey away, and where any reasonable person should be apprehensive or even terrified at the prospect of venturing into the unknown, he felt nothing but lightness and freedom coursing through his body. Maybe he would feel otherwise later: some sense of regret or loss or worry or homesickness, once his feet stood on the deck and he watched the skyline of New York City fade into the horizon. Maybe then the sense of leaving would feel more real. For the time being, though... everything felt right.

He easily recognized the anachronistic shapes of Loki and Thor amid the crowd, standing near the entrance to the second-class passengers’ gangway. Overly formal in their dark and heavy clothes, they looked as outdated and out of place as they always did, though Tony had come to so closely associate Loki with this odd style of dress that anything else would look strange on them as far as he was concerned. Loki in a youthful, modern cut of suit was something his mind’s eye simply could not picture.

“Did they manage to find space for your motorcar aboard this monstrous ship?” Loki asked as he approached.

“They did,” Tony said. “I had to drive it up the ramp into the cargo hold myself because none of the crewmen wanted to take the risk, but it’s in there now and I have the ticket to claim it in Liverpool. All in order. So are we ready to board?”

Thor nodded. “Yes. I’m ready to leave this place.”

In all, Thor had likely spoken fewer than a hundred words to Tony since they left Buffalo, though he had never come across as aloof or unwelcoming. Rather he seemed merely reserved and the type of man who kept to himself, which Tony did not mind at all. He hated forced smalltalk. Thor was polite and pleasant when addressed, but never took the initiative to start a conversation, and that suited Tony very well. So far he had not been required to speak a single word in explanation of why he was accompanying Loki back to England, outside of ‘searching for ghosts’.

“This way,” Tony instructed, flagging them over in the direction of the first class walkway. “Looks like the crowd is thinning a little. We should hurry.” But he took only two steps before Loki called him back, and he turned to see what the delay was.

Thor looked stoically off at some unknown point of interest as Loki spoke in a carefully chosen phrase. “We shall, perhaps, see you on board.”

Tony nearly asked what Loki meant by that when things suddenly clarified in his mind. He had not asked what class of ticket to buy, and had only assumed, by Loki’s genteel manners and refined speech, that of course they would be in first class. Where else would they belong? But there they stood, the noble Sir Thor Sharpe and his equally dignified brother, by the second class entrance.

“Oh,” Tony said, feeling a flush of heat rise to his cheeks. “I see. In that case, um...”

He was spared from having to think of anything intelligent to say by Loki giving him a tip of the hat in a leave-taking bow. “Good day, Mr. Stark. I shall look for you on the promenade deck this evening.”

He watched until Thor and Loki were halfway up the gangway, then forced himself to move through the remaining throngs of people: mostly families of outbound passengers at this point, still milling about on the pier after bidding farewell to their loved ones, waiting to watch the ship depart. He found his way up onto the deck easily enough. And then to his cabin, which was furnished with all the luxury the enthusiastic White Star Line ticket clerk had promised. Rich wood panelling covered the walls, and oversized, heavy curtains framed a small window to give it the illusion of being larger than it was. A large bed stood against one of the interior walls, with a writing desk nearby and two comfortable armchairs. It was a grand room, and but for the almost imperceptible movement of the ship floating alongside the pier, it could have been in any well appointed home or hotel.

Tony sat down on the edge of the bed. Here on his own, away from the crowds and separated from Loki, the feelings of uncertainty and dread that had eluded him earlier finally began to seep under his skin. What in the world was he doing? Leaving home behind? Leaving an established life behind? Leaving all of his friends, with no explanation, to run off to hunt ghosts in England with a person he only just met and barely knew? He had left a short letter for Bruce, though it had been more of an apology than anything and gave no reason for his sudden departure, only notice that he was gone.

Pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, Tony forced himself to think about something else. The decision had been made. He had packed up his belongings, hauled everything on a train to New York City, and now he was on a steam liner about to set out for Liverpool. What was done was done, and he was past the point of turning back. Besides, he reasoned to himself as he sat up straighter: if his endeavors in ghost hunting failed, or if he truly hated life in England, he could always return in the spring. This was not a permanent move. It dictated the next few months of his life, but he could always turn around and come home.

However. If that – the option to return home failure – was the most positive thought he could come up with, he needed to force himself into a better state of mind. On the positive side of things, he was about to embark on an adventure aboard one of the largest and most luxurious ships the world had ever seen. There was no sense sitting in his room working himself up into a state of anxiety over whether or not he had made a poor choice. He had made _a_ choice, and that was that. England awaited. The amenities aboard the Oceanic awaited. And there was Loki, somewhere aboard the ship, for him to find.

ooo

“No, you look nervous. You need to act natural. Act as if you know what you’re doing and that you have every right to be doing it, and nobody will spare you a second glance. Especially if you’re with me, and we look as if we’re purposefully going over there together. Come on. Walk right at my side. We’re having a very serious conversation about... er... the Boer War.”

Loki gave Tony the kind of skeptical look that was always shorthand for ‘I don’t agree with a single thing you’ve just said’. “What do you know about the Boer wars?”

“Nothing,” said Tony.   “That’s why you’re telling me all about it. ...Them? Was there more than one?”

“Two, in fact,” Loki said with a sigh. “The first in 1880 to 1881, and the second from 1899 to earlier this year.”

“Fascinating. Where did these take place?”

“South Africa. Is ‘Boer War’ just a term you read in a newspaper?”

“No, I’ll have you know I overheard it mentioned between my father and some of his very respectable business acquaintances. I was in the room at the time, so it’s almost as if I had been part of the discussion, and therefore almost as if I knew what they were talking about. Who won?”

“The Boers won the first war. The British won the second. But-”

“And who are the Boers?”

“Why all the interest in keeping up this topic of conversation when you clearly know nothing about it?” Loki asked.

“I told you from the start that I knew nothing,” Tony replied as he opened a door and ushered Loki inside. “But we’re here now, and I also told you nobody would notice if you followed me in. Welcome to the first class smoking lounge.”

Loki’s body immediately stiffened, along with his demeanor, as he looked around at the room. “Mr. Stark...”

“It’s Tony,” Tony said as he took a seat in the nearest ostentatious leather armchair. “We’re friends now, aren’t we? _Loki_? Have a seat.” When Loki hesitated, he leaned forward to whisper, “We’re already in here. If you look like you belong, everyone will be too polite to question your presence.”

Rigidly, Loki sat down, perched on the edge of his chair like he was liable to spring back up at any moment.

“Relax. You look as wooden as a ventriloquist’s dummy. Sit normally. Cigarette?” Pulling a silver cigarette case out of his pocket, Tony offered it to Loki.

“No, thank you. I find the smell rather unpleasant.”

“Sorry,” said Tony. He put the case back, tucking it out of sight. “I won’t, then. I’ve never really found myself in the habit of taking an afternoon smoke, but I do sometimes when I’m bored. And this ship? It’s boring me to death. I’ve gone through half my case in the last three days.”

“No ghosts on board?” Loki asked.

Tony grinned. “No. The Oceanic’s far too new. I haven’t bothered looking for any morbid signs that some pour soul died during construction. I _have_ been taking some photographs around the ship with my normal film, though, but I’ve had to limit myself. I don’t want to use up all of my supplies before we even reach Liverpool. Now sit back in your chair and try not to look like you’re about to be arrested. Do you want me to order us some brandy?”

“No,” said Loki. And then added, glancing over at a nearby group of older gentlemen lighting their cigars, “Must we sit in here?”

“I suppose not,” Tony allowed, trying not to sound too disappointed. The smoking lounge was one of the nicer public areas, and a place where he could more easily bring Loki. “We could visit the library.”

“Or we could continue to walk out on deck.”

“No, it’s too windy. I nearly lost my hat twice already today. But I have an idea,” he said as he stood. “Follow me.”

After three days at sea, there was nothing Tony wanted to do less than spend yet another hour walking aimlessly up and down the promenade deck, staring out over the same unchanging horizon as the same frigid pre-winter air blasted down on wind gusts from the north to chill through even his heaviest wool coat. So he led Loki to an interior hallway out of the cold, over to the one room where he knew they could sit undisturbed.

“There,” he said as he closed the door behind them. “No ship’s stewards in here to tell you to go back to your own deck, and no damned wind. Also, I have a bottle of wine. Shall I open it?”

“My word,” Loki murmured, looking around at the space. Tony could see his eyes travel from the side table bearing a decanter and cut-crystal glasses up to the ornamental blown glass of the lights overhead. “This is your cabin?”

“First class stateroom,” Tony said with a nod. “I suppose it’s somewhat larger than yours?”

“Thor and I share a very small space with bunk beds, a sink, and one chair. And very little room for anything else. I’m afraid to ask how much this cost.”

“Um. Well.”

“I thought forty-five dollars for a second-class berth was extravagant enough.”

“This cost more than forty-five dollars. Nearly... er... ten times more. Wine?”

“Yes, I think I’d better. Thank you.”

Carefully, Tony poured out two glasses, then handed one over to Loki and motioned for him to take one of the chairs next to the window. Outside, the sky had turned gray and overcast. No rain, but Tony suspected they were in for a storm.

Loki cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind me asking a somewhat impertinent question Mr. St- Tony?”

“By all means, go ahead,” Tony told him.

“Forgive me if I sound impolite, but if you have the money to pay for a stateroom such as this, why would you not have spent it instead on establishing your film manufacturing business? You told me you needed your father’s investment. But certainly you would have had enough money on your own?”

“Hm,” Tony said as he took a sip of wine. “Well. The answer to that is: when I spoke to you that day in the workroom, I did not have any of this money. It was only after my argument with my father and my decision to accompany you back to England that I went to sell my stock in Stark Industries. The amount proved to be... more than I had anticipated. Enough to live comfortably in England for some years. And since I’d already made my mind up to go, it didn’t occur to me to use the money otherwise. I suppose I could have. In hindsight, spending a good portion of it on this voyage was probably not the wisest idea. But if I’m honest, I can’t really bring myself to feel bad about wasting money I only have because of my father’s wealth. It’s not money I did anything to earn, besides being born, so... I feel like I should spend it stupidly. Don’t you agree?”

The expression on Loki’s face made it obvious he did not agree with that statement, though he quickly looked down to study his wine glass. “Then I hope you are able to earn it back easily,” he said. “It’s a terrible thing, in my experience, to have the family money run dry, and for one to find oneself with limited means of income.”

“Sorry,” Tony said, feeling his stomach sink. He had never thought to ask about Loki’s financial situation, and Loki had likewise never mentioned a word. But it seemed pointedly obvious if he gave it a moment’s thought: Thor seeking investment funds from Stark Industries, the second class tickets, even the outdated clothing. It all came together into a bleak picture that Tony had never thought to look at before.

“We try to keep up appearances as best we can,” Loki muttered to his cup, saying aloud what Tony was thinking. “The Avery Hotel. We spent far more than we should have on that room and ate little more than bread and jam to make up for it. And even a second class berth on this ship is...” His voice trailed off into a moment tight-lipped silence. “We have next to nothing,” he finally finished. “A name and a title and a crumbling estate. An excess of history and a lack of anything else. What land we have left is nowhere near good enough to draw more than a pittance in rent, which is why Thor decided to build those batteries of his in the first place. To see if he could make something worthwhile. Something to move us out of shadow of the past and push our fortunes into a more forgiving future. But it seems that any money he makes on sales he sinks right back into his work, making whatever improvements he thinks need to be done...”

The weight of Loki’s words felt like a sobering chain across Tony’s conscience. “You must think I’m a complete idiot.”

Loki looked up, a little hint of a smile on his lips. “Not a _complete_ idiot.”

“Half an idiot?”

“A bit naïve, perhaps, making questionable decisions. But not stupid.”

Tony could live with that. It was the same assessment he would give himself at the moment. “I promise I’ll do my best to live more frugally once we reach England.”

And that coaxed Loki’s smile to widen into a full-on grin. “Ah, my dear Mr. Stark... I think you’ll find you have no other choice.”

ooo

The storm had rolled in by the time the sun set, bringing with it wind and waves strong enough to rock the ship, and rain that drove against Tony’s window like pebbles. Tony called for dinner in his room, claiming he felt unwell, and one of the stewards brought him a plate of chicken with baked beans, sliced tomatoes, cheese, and a green salad, and apple cake and a glass of port for dessert. He shared with Loki. “What do they serve in the second class dining room?” he asked as they ate.

“We’ve had pork the last two nights. With beans and potatoes and cake. No cheese or port.”

“How uncivilized,” Tony said, shaking his head. “You know, there are at least two unoccupied first class berths on this deck. If you and Thor wanted, I would be more than happy to-”

“No,” Loki cut him off before he could finish the offer. “That is very kind of you, Tony, but we shall stay where we are.”

“Then at least have Thor join us to walk on the deck and take coffee. I’ve not seen him at all since we left New York. I’m beginning to think he doesn’t like me.”

“Oh, he likes you well enough,” Loki said wryly. “If he didn’t, he would have told you already. It’s the sea that doesn’t agree with him.” He looked up at the window. “And speaking of the sea, it looks to be getting worse. I should go.”

“No, don’t be ridiculous,” Tony said before Loki had a chance to stand up. “It’s pouring out there, and you have to go outside to return to the second class deck. You’ll be soaked. Just stay here for the night.”

“I can’t. Thor will worry if I don’t return.”

“Thor knows you’re with me. If he worries too much, he’ll call a steward to ask me where you are.”

“You only have one bed.”

Tony glanced over at the one bed that stood against the wall. That much was, in fact, true: he did only have one bed. However. “It’s... a very large bed?”

The way Loki looked at him made Tony’s blood pound faster through his veins as every muscle in his legs felt suddenly weakened. It wasn’t a look of ridicule at that preposterous suggestion, as Tony would have expected. It was more of a look of appraisal. A questioning look, as if Loki sought answers for a question that had not yet been asked. Slowly, Loki tilted his head to one side, eyes never leaving Tony’s face. Tony could not even bring himself to blink. He licked his lips, suddenly dry. Something warm and dark blossomed deep in his core, and it grew and pulsed in time with his speeding heart.

Loki broke the spell by turning away. “I will sleep on the chair,” he said.

“Yes, that sounds good,” Tony murmured. It was a fight to keep the disappointment from his voice.


	6. Chapter 6

England’s coast began as a misty shape on the horizon, growing slowly, minute by minute, into the distinct shapes of landmass and buildings as the Oceanic steamed onwards into Liverpool. For the first time on the entire voyage, Thor stood on deck alongside Loki and Tony. As usual, though, he remained quiet. And it seemed to Tony as if he were in a foul mood, glaring out at the harbor with a creased brow and discontented lines turning down the corners of his mouth. He sighed in annoyance when excited chatter rose from the other passengers, and retreated back indoors without a word well before the ship docked.

“Is something wrong?” Tony asked Loki, though Loki shook his head.

“No more than usual. He’s merely upset to return home with no success in selling his batteries. He thought this trip would be far more prosperous. Instead, it cost us money we can ill afford to lose.”

“Sorry,” Tony murmured, not knowing what else to say.

“There is no need for you to apologize. I told him before we set out that his plan would not work. Americans have far too much of an independent spirit. They prefer to do everything themselves, making it newer and bigger and better... He should focus on selling his wares in Carlisle and Manchester. He should have listened to me. And followed my idea.”

“What was your idea?”

Loki fell silent a moment before answering, pushing his wind-whipped black hair back from his face. “I wanted to leave England permanently. Go to New York and stay. Not necessarily there, but... somewhere. Somewhere new. Somewhere vibrant, with energy and excitement, away from this dreary place that has given us nothing since... since as long as I can remember.” He sighed and looked down at his hands. “But Thor likes to uphold tradition. He won’t leave. Not as long as there’s one speck of life left in our desolate prison.”

“Surely it can’t be that bad,” Tony said.

Loki only shook his head. “You will see.”

That sounded like a door closing on that topic of conversation. Tony did not push further or ask additional questions, instead turning to blander comments on the weather – heavy, wet fog lay over the harbor, chilling everyone through from nose to feet – or the absurd hats worn by some of the first class ladies. They stayed together on deck while the Oceanic pulled into dock, then disembarked together to go see the cargo manager about Tony’s automobile. They finally met Thor again to pick up their baggage, and he was every bit as irritable as he had been aboard the ship.

“Finally,” he grunted. “The train for Carlisle leaves in just under two hours. If we miss it, we’ll be stuck here overnight.”

“What’s wrong with staying here overnight?” Tony asked.

In answer, Thor turned around and gave him a look that could mean nothing other than ‘are you insane?’

“I mean,” Tony explained, “we’ve just come off a trans-Atlantic voyage, most of which was spent indoors because of the rain. I think it might be a nice idea to not immediately stuff ourselves into a train car. Why not walk around? Have a nice meal? How far is Carlisle anyhow?”

“A hundred and forty or so miles,” said Thor. “A journey of several hours. You’ll have plenty of time to walk and eat on the train.”

Thor was a lost cause. Tony turned instead to Loki. “But what I won’t be able to do on the train is buy new film stock to replace what I used on the ship, as well as all the darkroom chemicals I was unable to bring from Buffalo. I’ll need those if I hope to accomplish anything here. Also, since it’s difficult trying to find a train with sufficient cargo space to take the Oldsmobile, it would make more sense for me to drive up to Carlisle. Unfortunately I only have two seats, but what if Thor went on ahead by train, and you stayed with me and we drove tomorrow or the next day?”

He expected more of an argument from Thor. Something to the effect of ‘you can buy everything you need in Carlisle’. But Thor remained curiously silent as Loki’s eyebrows rose in consideration of the offer, and the two of them exchanged a look that Tony could not decipher. A silent exchange spoken only with their eyes.

“Yes, I think that sounds reasonable,” Loki finally said, nodding to Thor. “Tony and I will stay here to buy his supplies. You go on ahead by train.”

Again, Thor did not argue, only nodded to Loki in return. “Very well. I will go on ahead and ensure the house is in order. I’ll expect you in the next few days.”

“I didn’t think he was going to agree to that,” Tony said once Thor had left to join the queue for a cab to take him to the train station.

“Thor can be reasonable,” Loki replied. “At times. But we should find a place to stay, then go looking for the supplies you need.”

Tony had no intention of arguing with that. “And a hot meal,” he said, wrapping his scarf tighter against the frigid dampness of the fog.

ooo

They stayed two nights in Liverpool as Tony sought out the supplies he needed, and left on the morning of the third day. To Tony’s relief, the majority of the fog had cleared out, along with the intermittent rain, leaving behind only partially clouded skies that allowed weak yellow rays of sunlight to reach the Earth. It made the drive more pleasant not to be pounded by rain or burdened by fog. But the roads still grew rough and muddy the farther they traveled, and what began as a well maintained thoroughfare eventually dwindled down into a deeply rutted and potholed dirt path. For long stretches between towns, Tony could drive at hardly more than a horse’s trotting speed.

“I don’t suppose many people around here own automobiles?” Tony asked as he slowly rolled through a muddy depression too wide to drive around.

“No,” Loki told him. “I’d wager yours is the first to drive these roads. I’ve never seen anything more than a horse- or ox-cart.

Tony swore as they hit the next pothole too fast and the entire seat rattled. Loki, staring at the road ahead, said nothing, so Tony kept any further comments to himself. He was running out of conversation ideas as the silence grew heavier around them. They had already exhausted comments on the weather, the road, a recap of their voyage aboard the Oceanic, Tony’s plans for photographing ghosts, and whether or not the hand pies they’d bought from a woman a few towns back had spoiled. Anything more was met by vague, noncommittal answers from Loki. It only served to uncomfortably highlight the fact that Tony, for all the time he had spent with Loki over the past two weeks, barely knew the man sitting next to him. He knew nothing about Loki’s past or about his family, other than the existence of Thor. He did not know if Loki had any hobbies, or if he had attended university, or his favorite book, or if he liked listening to music. He did not even know how old Loki was, outside of hazarding a guess at somewhere around thirty. Really, he knew nothing at all. Nearly all of their conversations revolved around Tony’s life. Never Loki’s.

Tony looked over at Loki: a bright profile limned by the sun. Hat pulled down low almost to his eyes, it nonetheless did not stop the wind from tangling Loki’s hair across his face. What was he thinking about, behind those pale, cold eyes? He stared off at the horizon with too much intensity, obviously lost in thought about some mystery topic. Home? Thor? Some task that needed to be done? All the mysteries of God and the universe? How much his rear end hurt from bumping along down the road for so long?

Thus distracted, Tony missed spotting a large rut in the road, which knocked him off course and nearly into a collision with a hedgerow. “Sorry,” he quickly said as Loki clung to the dash.

“Perhaps we should drive more slowly?” Loki suggested through clenched teeth.

“That depends on how much farther we have to go.”

“I’d say we’re approximately halfway there.”

Over five hours of driving, and they were only halfway to their destination. “No, sorry,” Tony said, speeding up as much as he dared. “But I’ll try to be more careful.”

If Loki scowled, Tony did not see it, since he was too busy paying much closer attention to the road.

For the next five hours, he did his best to keep up his concentration, tiresome as it was over the endless, repetitive landscape interrupted only occasionally by a sparse dotting of villages. The sun hung low and red on the horizon by the time Loki instructed him to turn down an overgrown side road. But there, looming ahead against the deepening sky, stood the vast, black shape of an old manor house, with its sharply peaked roof and asymmetrical turrets reaching up like claws to scratch at the shreds of clouds.

“And here we are,” Loki muttered as Tony stared. “Allerdale Hall. Once great, now crumbling back into the earth. I apologize, Tony, if you were expecting something... grander.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Tony assured him, staring at the imposing shape on the hill before them. “More than fine. It’s perfect. I came expecting ghosts, not the Waldorf Astoria. This is... what I had been picturing in my head.”

“You may change your mind when you see the inside.”

Tony doubted that. He couldn’t help but keep his gaze locked on the house as they approached, passing through a wrought iron gate and up the ill-used driveway. Whatever lay inside, he was certain it would be exactly to his liking. Plush carpets or dingy cobwebs. Dark corners or elegant corridors. Neither much mattered to him. He stopped right before the door and looked up at the grand façade towering overhead. Some trick of the eye made it seem to be leaning in over him like an ominous shadow.

“It certainly looks impressive from out here,” he said to Loki. His eyes swept from one edge of the roof to the other, taking in every tooth-like spine of decoration and every broken detail along the way. He jumped down from his seat to the ground. “We should probably bring all the luggage in first, then you can show me around before it gets too dark.”

With no disagreement from Loki, Tony quickly untied everything from the rear of the automobile, unstacking and handing off the smaller pieces for Loki to carry in alone and then gratefully accepting some assistance with the large trunks when Thor appeared in the doorway with an offer of help. Outside in the wake of the setting sun, the air had turned cold enough for Tony to see his breath. But inside was hardly better. A vast foyer opened like a cavern on the other side of the door, almost too dark for Tony to make out any detail apart from the grand staircase that swept up the wall on the left side and curled around the whole of the interior like a snake with protruding ribs. Deeply shadowed doors led off to even blacker rooms beyond, ahead and to the right. A draft came in from somewhere, scuttling dead leaves and grass across the floor, and Tony found the source when he looked up: a gaping hole in the roof, framing a patch of dusk-blue sky with broken timber and crumbling shingles.

“A fire,” Thor said as Tony stared. “Years ago. Lighting struck the tower, and it was only the luck of the storm and the pouring rain that prevented the rest of the house from burning to the ground.”

Tony nodded. “I see.” He did not ask why it had never been repaired.

“I’ll stoke up the fireplace in the library and make us a pot of tea,” Thor told him. “You must be cold after traveling so far.”

“Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”

As Thor retreated through one of the dark doors, Tony turned to Loki, who stood back nearer the door in silence. He had said nothing since their arrival. No words of welcome. Loki merely looked around at the room, from the uneven, water-damaged floor to the staircase’s threadbare carpet and cracked spindles, with an expression on his face that said defeat more than it did relief at finally returning home after a long journey.

“Well the place certainly looks haunted,” Tony joked in an attempt to lighten the air.

“Yes,” Loki answered dully, having clearly missed the ‘joke’ part. “It does. Every year more so than the last.” With a shake of his head, he picked up two of the smaller cases. “Let me show you up to your room.”

Only a little dim, gray-blue light came in through sparse and dusty windows, making it difficult to see as Loki led the way up the stairs to a second-floor hallway. He opened the door to the room first on the right, completely engulfed in blackness until he managed to produce a box of matches and light a candle. “I’m sorry it’s so cold now,” he said. “But it looks like Thor laid wood in the fireplace, so you can light that when you’re ready for bed and it should help.”

Tony, too busy staring at all the strange details of the room, barely remembered to mutter ‘thank you’. The room was larger than his bedroom back in Buffalo at least by half, and furnished more than adequately: a hanging wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a writing desk, two large armchairs flanking the fireplace, and several small side- and end-tables set throughout. But everything in the room was dark. And not just for lack of light: everything, from the drapery on the windows to the upholstery on the chairs to the wallpaper to the ebony wood of the furniture and floor, was a somber shade of blue, black, or gray. Most prominently, a large bed with a black wood frame stood in the center of the far wall exactly opposite the door. Heavy velvet curtains in a charcoal hue hung about the imposing and oversized headboard from a partial canopy, giving Tony the unsettling impression of some kind of ghostly, shrouded grim reaper leaning over the bed. All that darkness made the room feel colder than it was. Tony rubbed his hands together. He had not yet removed his driving gloves.

“I am sorry,” Loki softly said, looking at Tony’s hands. “For the... state of everything. I should have better warned you.”

“This room definitely still fits with the ‘haunted’ theme,” Tony replied.

“This used to be the room that would have belonged to the lady of the manor. Years ago. I have the master’s room next door. Thor prefers to sleep on the ground floor behind the kitchen in the old servants’ quarters, where he keeps his workshop. I’m afraid those rooms, the kitchen and Thor’s work area, are the only parts of the house with electric light. We’ve not yet managed to extend the wiring elsewhere. So...” He looked at the candle. “I recommend keeping a match box in your pocket and always having a candle with you. Or you can take a kerosene lamp if you prefer. There are three in the kitchen.”

“I’ll make do,” Tony said, because he had to. “But do I dare ask about plumbing?”

For the first time since their arrival, Loki smiled. Not brightly, but a little smile was there nonetheless. “There is a full bath at the end of this hall, with running water and everything. It does take some time for hot water to work its way up through the pipes, but I promise you it will eventually come.”

Hot water. Of everything Loki said, that sounded most appealing to Tony’s ears. He could have a hot bath before bed, and wash off the dirt of the road while steaming away the damp chill of the air. Maybe things would seem less dreary once he was warm.

“Now let me quickly show you the remainder of the house,” said Loki. “Then we can sit by the fire and have something to eat.”

Tony nodded. “I won’t object to any of those things. Lead on.”

Candle in hand, Loki started the tour down the corridor that housed their bedrooms, pointing out his own room and the numerous other dusty doors. “All empty,” he said, “apart from a few pieces of furniture. You may have a look tomorrow if you wish, though I can’t imagine they would hold anything of interest. And then the bath through that door at the end. The floor is marble and can be very cold. Wear your shoes.”

“I will,” Tony murmured. They went no farther down that corridor, which suited Tony well enough. The over-embellished, ribbed arches lining the way had been styled with protruding spines, and in the weak, flickering light of Loki’s candle, almost appeared to move. Like rows of teeth in the maw of some grotesque worm. And stupid as he knew the feeling was, Tony had no desire to stand under any of them.

Loki led them back to the stairway but stopped short of entering the mirror image corridor that branched off on the other side. “None of the rooms in that wing are in use. You may have a look, but be careful, as floorboards may be loose or rotten. Then up one more level,” he continued, standing to look up the stairs, “we have another floor of rooms in each of the wings. To the right, I would use caution. I would not go to the left. And do not go any farther up. The attic floor is rotted through in places, and sections of the roof are collapsing in. The entire structure is unsafe. As is the cellar, which you must also avoid. Thor stores his batteries there, and they can be dangerous.”

“Actually, electrical and industrial equipment is something I’m familiar with,” said Tony. “More so than rotten floorboards, at least.”

“I would still ask that you remain above ground. Thor can be... particular about his work.”

Tony understood that. He could be ‘particular’ about his own work, too.

They returned to the main floor to finish the tour, with Loki pointing out the unused great hall that lay under the unsafe wing to the left, and the dining room, kitchen, and old servants’ quarters under their bedroom wing to the right. Between the two, straight ahead, was the library, where Thor had prepared a crackling fire, a tray of tea, and plates of bread and cheese and cold meat. Tony took a chair nearest the fireplace and eagerly accepted a cup of tea from Loki. Strong and bitter, it tasted every bit as black and old and decrepit as the house, but at least it was hot.

“So this is to be your new home,” Thor said, at which Tony nodded over the rim of his teacup. “Do you know yet how long you wish to stay?”

“Er... no,” Tony replied, trying to determine if Thor meant that as a comment on his potentially unwanted presence. No, he quickly decided. It was nothing more than polite smalltalk from somebody he hardly knew yet whose house he was now occupying. “I’ll need to see how my preliminary work goes, then determine a more exact plan once I have a better idea of what I can expect here. But I think I shall be staying several months at least.”

“Good, yes,” said Thor. “You won’t want to be leaving before spring. The weather here, the wind and rain, can be treacherous this time of year, and snow will soon be coming. I hope you are able to make yourself comfortable for the winter.”

An image of the bedroom upstairs flashed through Tony’s mind, and he could not help but wonder how in the world such a heavy and dark place, collapsing under the weight of its baroque over-ornamentation, could be considered ‘comfortable’. Maybe the bed had a good mattress under all those stiff-looking layers. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

He tested that mattress as soon as he excused himself to go back upstairs. It seemed adequate. Cold as death, like everything else, but soft enough and decked in good linens. And a nice fire would do something about the chill. He set his candlestick on the hearth and was about to remove the candle to hold it to the kindling, but stopped just short. In the absolute silence of the room, he could hear his own heartbeat pulsing below his ears, and the ticking of his watch in his breast pocket, and some other strange whooshing noise accented with metallic creaks and groans, like nothing he had ever heard before. The sound sent a shiver of uncertainty down his spine. And absurd as it was, all he could think of as he listened to its cyclical repetition was the swinging pendulum from Poe’s story.

He held his breath to better hear. It was coming from outside.

Crossing to the window, he pushed back the drapes to peer outside. The waning moon’s slim crescent gave little light. It was enough, though, for Tony to see the gangling silhouettes of towering shapes against the inky blue sky. Wind turbines. A dozen of them, standing in three-by-four rows out behind the house. Their spidery metal frames creaked as a gust of wind came in, turning their heads to catch it and turn the blades.

He let the drapes fall shut. Wind turbines. That was all. Nothing supernatural, and nothing to be afraid of, even if the sound of them made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He was being childish and letting the strangeness of the house get to him. Loki and Thor lived here, he reasoned as he lit the fire. They lived here, and they were fine. Nothing to worry about. No danger. And if there were ghosts about... Well, he would take photos and document them in a proper scientific manner, as if he were studying birds or insects or fossils or anything else.

He kept that idea in mind as he paced down the ghastly, teeth-filled corridor on the way to the bath: Loki and Thor lived here. The ghosts, if any, had to be harmless. He kept his eyes on his candle flame and refused to look up at the spined arches hovering overhead. They were nothing. No danger. No threat. Only architecture. Horrible architecture, but nothing more than that.

The water from the bathtub tap – cold, as Loki had warned – ran rust-red at first, adding to the stain on the enamel. Tony let it run until the water finally turned hot, then stopped the drain to let the tub fill. Reluctantly, he pulled off his clothes. Was it just his imagination, or did the air around the bath seem even colder than the rest of the house? He stepped into the tub even before it was even six inches filled, feeling the frigid enamel against the bottoms of his feet and on his knees when he knelt to rinse his hair and face under the running stream of water. Quickly, he splashed the rest of his body and gave himself a quick rub with a soap bar. That would be good enough for the time being, in the dark and cold.

Turning off the tap, he sat back on his heels and listened for a moment to the unnaturally still air. The sound of the wind turbines could still be heard, faintly in the distance, above the tapering drip of the tub faucet, but nothing else. There were no other sounds in this barren corner of the world: no streets outside where people walked through conversations, no automobiles or horse carriages or bicycles wheeling past, no barking dogs, no whistles of approaching trains. None of the everyday sounds of the city. Only wind across the barren moor.

But there wasn’t any sense in dwelling on those things. He wasn’t in Buffalo any more. He was in an old house on a remote and lonely hill. And he was there by choice. This was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Ghosts of the old world? Shadows and mysteries?

It was a little overwhelming, he decided: that was all. Such a drastic change all at once. He’d grow accustomed to it. This was only his first night. His first handful of hours. In a few days, everything would seem more natural, and he would no longer feel that eerie tingle down the back of his neck as if unseen eyes were watching him from unlit corners of the room.


	7. Chapter 7

Tony woke early to a heavy blanket of mist surrounding the house as far as he could see, and dressed once again in his full suit and wool coat to keep the damp chill at bay. Downstairs, Thor had made oatmeal for breakfast. Never Tony’s favorite, he ate it anyhow because it was food and it was hot, along with more bitter, black tea. Loki sat across the kitchen table looking no happier than he had been the previous night, absently poking at his breakfast and staring down at nothing in particular.

“So I, uh... I think I’ll start today by unpacking all my equipment,” Tony said to break the silence. “Get everything set up.”

Loki wordlessly nodded, but at least Thor was more in the mood for conversation. “Do you have many things?” he asked. “Will you have enough space in your bedroom, or do you require an extra work room?”

“A work room would actually be very nice,” said Tony, running through a mental tally of all his various things and the tabletop square footage they would require. “No need for fancy furniture, but if you have an empty room with a few tables, that would be all I need.”

“You can use any of the upstairs rooms, and any of the furniture in them. Loki can help you move things around.”

Loki looked sharply up at Thor with the kind of expression that bordered on irritation. “I suppose I should, shouldn’t I?” he asked, and something in his tone made Tony wonder if they had been quarrelling earlier that morning and had not yet reconciled. Thor’s pleasant smile, though, shared none of Loki’s cutting edge.

“I was actually wondering...” Tony began, steering things in a new direction. “My image enlarger for printing photographs requires electric light. Loki mentioned last night that the only electrical wiring you have in the house is in this area. Is there a room, or part of a room, where I could have all of my print-making supplies?”

The change in Thor’s smile from genuine to stiff was small but still perceptible. At the same time, Loki’s stony coolness broke into a smirk. “Oh I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” Loki said. “Thor won’t mind at all. Will you, Thor?”

“No,” Thor answered. The reply of a child saying what was expected of him. “That will be fine. I’ll find space for you.”

Whatever it was that snarled between Loki and Thor, prompting these little nips at each other back and forth, Tony didn’t even want to bother asking. “Thank you; I’d appreciate that,” was all he said. Then he went back to his porridge and his tea and left the brothers to work out their troubles on their own.

He began the day’s work after breakfast by cleaning. The room across the corridor from his was empty and available, but filled with all the dust that came from years of disuse. There was a writing desk in there he could use, and a dressing table, but none of the other furniture would be appropriate. He pushed it all into one corner, leaving dark streaks behind on the dusty floor. That would have to go: dust would ruin his film as fast as anything. He pushed the desk and table into place against the wall and then got to work wiping everything down with a bucket of warm water.

Loki appeared partway through the cleaning phase to help him move more tables in from other rooms and unpack the camera equipment. From the carefully packed trunk to the newly cleaned floor, and from the floor to the table, Loki helped organize all the camera components and other pieces Tony had brought with him. They left the film supplies upstairs, but took everything related to developing and printing down to one of the rooms in Thor’s area of the house where Tony could access the electrical wiring. Tony called for a break around midday for something to eat; Loki called for another in the afternoon for tea. In the end, the sky was dark and it was time for supper before they were done.

Ghost hunting, though, was best done at night. So after supper, with sore shoulders and raw hands from a day of lifting and moving and bending and wiping, Tony loaded his best camera with one of his prepared film slides, and packed a dozen more slides into a satchel. He knew exactly where to start taking pictures. If any ghosts lingered in the corridor outside his bedroom, he wanted to know about them.

It took a few minutes to place and light all the candles on the floor along the walls. Ten down each side: enough to provide sufficient illumination if he timed a long exposure. He set the camera on its tripod right outside his bedroom door. And waited.

It was different, trying to capture an image of a ghost in this unfamiliar house when compared to the moving picture he had made of his mother’s spirit in the parlor or the photograph of Pepper’s aunt Helena during the séance. On both those occasions, he had felt something in the air shift, something subtle, and he had just _known_ when to begin. He was able to sense something of the ghosts. Here, the situation was nowhere near that simple. Everything around him felt off. Everything felt cold, and not necessarily in a way only caused by the weather outside. Everywhere felt as if there were someone or something just out of sight: a flicker in the corner of his eye that he was never quick enough to catch. But he still sat on the floor with his watch in his hand, waiting for a sign that it was time to begin.

After almost an hour, as he fought to stay awake and keep his chin from drooping down to hit his chest, the floor creaked, and the candles flickered, and his heart nearly jumped out through his throat when a door slowly groaned open to reveal a pale figure.

It was Loki, dressed only in trousers and an untucked white shirt, standing in his bedroom doorway. “...Oh,” Loki said, looking down at the candles. “I apologize if I’ve interrupted anything.”

Fighting to catch his breath, all Tony could do for a moment was shake his head before his voice came shakily back. “No. I’m... Um. I...”

“Did I frighten you?”

“No, no,” Tony forced out. “Um, startled, maybe. I was... I kept nearly drifting off. The sound of your door, um... startled me awake.”

“I see,” said Loki, which Tony took to mean, _I can see that you are clearly lying about being frightened._ “I am sorry. I’m in the terrible habit of reading until all hours and then finally washing well past midnight. If you’ll excuse me...”

Candle in hand, he retreated down the corridor to the bath until all that was left was a tiny pinprick of orange light coming through the keyhole of the door. Would it be considered strange, Tony wondered, to now take photographs of what amounted to the door of the room in which Loki was bathing? _Yes,_ he decided. That seemed awkward. He could not take pictures while Loki was in the bath, but nor could he easily take pictures after Loki exited the bath, since that idea and the accompanying image would still be stuck in his mind.

“Damn it, Loki,” he muttered as he unscrewed the camera from the tripod and carried both back into the work room. He needed to stop these thoughts that kept popping into his head at such inconvenient and unwanted times. Loki was his friend. His friend and nothing more, and not even a close friend. A friend he hardly knew. They still spoke politely to each other. Tony had spent a good portion of the workday wondering if Loki disliked him, until he decided that was just Loki’s perpetually reserved demeanor. He had no business at all thinking about Loki in the bath.

Except he still _did_ , and that imaginary picture hovering behind his eyes was enough to make his blood run hot despite the chill in the air.

He actually slapped himself to stop that line of thought right there, and went back out to the corridor to extinguish and collect the candles. They were less than a third spent; he could use them again the next night and hope for better luck and fewer interruptions. (There. That was what he should keep thinking about: his work.)

The door to the bath opened as Tony dithered about with the candles and slowly unpacked the slides from his satchel, wasting time in hope of accomplishing something he could not even explain to himself. Loki emerged from the darkness with wet hair and a damp sheen to his skin, once again wearing his trousers but having lost his shirt. Tony, in the work room doorway, froze to watch him approach.

“Are you done for the night?” he asked.

Unable to speak, Tony only nodded as Loki, the perfect, spectral being, illuminated pale and golden in the light of that single candle flame, stopped to look over at him. Strands of wet hair, shining like starlight, framed Loki’s pale face and fell down to curling points around his shoulders. His eyes were too dark to see other than as a reflective glimmer amid deep-set shadows cast by the angle of his brow. Still, Tony could feel their presence, raking over skin and bone. The same penetrating gaze, now amplified by Loki’s nakedness to make Tony feel twice as bare.

Loki, for reasons Tony worked desperately not to entertain, did not go immediately back into his bedroom. Instead he stood there in the doorway and leaned back with one shoulder against the frame in a comfortable pose. One hand held the candle; the other rested at his hip. “Any luck with the ghosts?”

Again, Tony replied without words, shaking his head. His eyes had shifted downward to Loki’s chest, and an odd marking there on the left side. Loki was too far for him to make out anything more than a round, black shape that could only be a tattoo. But of what, and why Loki had it, Tony had no clue. He gave himself a little shake all over and a hard mental kick.   “Aren’t you cold?” he asked, desperate to say anything that might legitimize his staring.

Loki might have smiled, or it might have just been a flicker in the candlelight playing over the gentle lines of his lips. “No. I’ve lived in this wretched climate for so long I now scarcely feel it. Are you?”

“Yes,” Tony answered. Though not as much as he had been minutes earlier before Loki appeared like a thermal magnet to draw all bodily heat into Tony’s face and other inconvenient areas.

“Then we shall have to find a way to warm your bed,” said Loki, at which Tony’s pounding pulse dropped straight down between his legs and the breath in his throat became too thick to swallow. Until Loki added, “There should be a copper warming pan hanging on the wall next to the wardrobe. Fill it with embers from the fire, and let it sit in your bed a few minutes to warm everything through. That should make you more comfortable. Good night, Tony.”

He did not wait for Tony to say anything in return before disappearing into his bedroom and shutting the door behind him.

Tony, thus left with nothing else to do, retreated back into his own room. The fire he had started before attempting to take pictures had burned down into a dark red glow; he threw on two new logs and stoked it back up before undressing. There on the wall, as Loki had said, was the copper bed-warming pan hanging by a long handle. Something to use another night, maybe. Now, his entire body felt hot and all he wanted to do was climb between the cold, white sheets and hope it shocked some sense into him.

That, out in the corridor, had been nothing. There was no point to wondering if any of it had been what he thought it had been, or if it was just his ridiculous, overactive imagination seeing something he wanted where in truth there was nothing at all. Because it was very clearly his imagination. Loki was his friend and nothing more. Not even a friend. A business acquaintance and now landlord. That was all.

It was only his imagination. And it was only his imagination now that drew his hand down to his hardening cock. That was all. Imagination. An imaginary picture of Loki’s pale skin, soft as satin over every angle of bone and rounded contour of muscle. An imaginary feeling of Loki’s hand in place of his own, long fingers gently squeezing as they stroked up and down his length. The imaginary tingle of Loki’s breath against his ear, and a scratch of imaginary teeth on his neck. Loki’s chest against his and Loki’s hips between his thighs...

He came hard with a grunt into his pillow, spilling onto his hand and the hem of his night shirt. Then lay still for a minute to let the last waves of desire (imaginary desire) ebb from his body and sink down through the mattress, into the floor, and away to dissolve in the darkness. In the quiet of the room, even though he curiously listened, he could hear no evidence of Loki next door. Only the whispers and snaps of the fire, and the ever-present breath of the windmills churning through the night air.

ooo

The next day, he barely saw Loki at all. Their paths crossed at mealtimes, but otherwise Tony kept himself secluded up in his workroom tinkering with camera parts, and Loki made no appearance in that area of the house. He set up his camera up on the third floor that night, out of range of distractions, where only the distantly echoing sound of footsteps and a closing door served as any reminder of Loki’s hazardous presence. He had work to do.

For more hours than he wanted to count, Tony sat up in the cold, cobwebbed hallway, taking a photograph whenever the candle flames flickered in a draft or an unexplained tingle slid down his back. Twenty-four in total. He finally forced himself to into bed at half past three. And woke up well after ten to begin another day of work, experimentation, avoiding Loki, and trying his hardest to even feel a little bit at home.

After three days, he still felt like just as much of an outsider in an impossibly strange place as he did when he first set foot through the door. The Oceanic had felt more welcoming than this house.

With nothing else to occupy his time, he devoted every hour to work. Making film slides. Fine-tuning his cameras. Prowling the house every night taking photographs and disrupting his sleep schedule to the point where he became almost nocturnal, going to bed at dawn and waking in time for supper in the evening. He spent even less time interacting with Loki with each passing day, but that was for the best, wasn’t it? Oddly, it seemed to him as if the two of them were on better terms the less they spoke. They exchanged pleasant conversation as they ate simple meals of sausages and potatoes, mostly on the topic of Tony’s work progress.

Loki and Thor, on the other hand, were clearly quarrelling again, speaking snappishly to each other (if they spoke at all) over yet another disagreement that they did not bother to share with Tony. He imagined this happened often. With only the two of them stuck alone and isolated in the house in the middle of nowhere, what else did they have to do but get on each other’s nerves? Tony had certainly felt that way living with his father. And that had been in the middle of a city where he could easily escape to vent his frustrations to friends, or visit a shop or show or café to ease his mind. Loki and Thor had only each other and empty silence.

But Tony’s intense focus on work and little else had an unfortunate side effect: he used all of his film supplies, meant to last the entire winter, within the first two weeks.

He had a few remaining dregs of chemicals to mix emulsion, but no celluloid. And even if he wanted to scrape clean and re-coat old negatives, he was nearly out of everything needed to develop film and make prints. He could manage maybe four more slides: it would not be worth ruining any negatives for that little gain.

He glanced out the window at the dark hills and a few loose snowflakes skimming against the glass in the moonlight. He’d need to make a trip somewhere to restock before any real snow came and made the roads impassable. Liverpool was too far. He had no intention of going through that drive again until it was time to return to America. But Loki had mentioned Carlisle being the closest city, and it would be worth having a look there for what he needed. In the worst case scenario, Carlisle or even a smaller nearby town would have a post office where he could send away to Liverpool or London for what he needed.

In the meantime, he had a night of work ahead of him and nothing to do but look at prints. Perhaps use the rest of his chemicals and remaining paper on reprinting a few to try for better results. Sharpen here, add contrast there, make this one lighter...

He had stacks of hundreds of photographs he could go through. Most of them good. Most of them promising. Many of them showing distinct ghost activity of pale shapes and foggy presences. He could work on improving some of those, thought he felt like it was too early in the night to sit patiently and stare at pictures. He had too much energy. This was the time for wandering the house in search of spirits. He would just have to hunt ghosts using equipment other than cameras.

Over in the corner of the room, he had unpacked his electromagnetic spectrometers and similar allegedly ghost-sensitive devices. Half of them were next-to-worthless novelties he had ordered from the back pages of disreputable publications, and the rest were his own next-to-worthless copies of those novelties. Pieces of junk meant to detect supernatural energy by waving around a long metal wand and hoping it transferred readings to a slender needle encased in glass. In Tony’s experience, all they ever managed to detect was static electricity.

With the lack of anything better to do, however... He could at least give a few of them a try to see if they picked up anything in places where he had consistently photographed ghosts on previous nights. He selected two of the meters he thought to be best, one of his own and one purchased, when a third caught his eye. This one had a similar spectrometer body with two spindly antennae protruding out the front, but also a short lens like an eyepiece from a pair of opera glasses. The most expensive and also most disappointing of the lot, this one had promised the ability to see ghosts by virtue of electromagnetic energy collected between the antennae and fed across the specially sensitized lens. Tony had spent some time on it a year or so earlier, doing all he could to make it more efficient and upgrading the lens with a new coating he believed would be more effective, but it had never produced any results.

Still, he picked it up. If ever such a thing had a hope of working, it would be in this house.

He took all three devices out into the hallway, where there was, unsurprisingly, no movement from the needles. If any of these useless things worked it would be a turn of events more shocking than any of the ghost evidence he had so far captured on film. Holding a candle in one hand and his own spectrometer out in front of him in the other, with the other two devices tucked under his arms, he walked slowly up the stairs to the third floor with his eyes on the needle. It wobbled slightly, but only from the impact of his steps. When he reached the top of the stairs, he stood still. The needle did not move.

Keeping his steps as smooth and even as possible, he began slowly pacing the hallway to the right, over to the far end and back. The needle showed nothing. He tried again. A little slower, giving the antennae more of a chance to pick up any ambient energy. All the way to the end, the needle did not move. But on his way back, as he approached his starting point at the top of the stair, it began to flicker.

He stopped where he stood and held his breath. For a second, the needle stayed where it was, but then fell back down to its resting position. When he took a step forward, it moved again. And again, with another step, until it swung rhythmically like a drumbeat. The farther forward he walked, the greater the swing.

The ghost was leading him into the wing on the left side of the house, where Loki told him not to go.

Stopping at spiked archway that marked the entrance to the wing, he crouched down to set both spectrometers on the floor. Both needles kept moving, wobbling and swinging in almost perfect synchronicity. Tony could feel his heart pounding in his chest, and when he tried to swallow, there was only a dry lump refusing to go down. His breath sounded too loud in his ears no matter how he tried to calm it.

Slowly, he stood back up; his eyes kept jumping from the spectrometers on the floor to the black depths of the off-limits wing, looking as perfectly empty as a crypt. He pulled out the viewing lens from under his arm, awkward as it was to correctly position it over his eye with only one free hand. The eyepiece itself was dim from its coatings. He had to hold the candle directly beside the lens to have any hope of seeing anything at all. And what he saw was mostly muddy darkness. Darkness, but with an indistinct blob of lighter gray off to one side.

He needed more hands. It was too difficult to try to turn the focus ring on the lens by prodding it with only one finger, and the more he turned it, making little improvement, the more he began to realize that the ghost was coming toward him. The blurred shape was growing larger. And then there were two of them. And then three. As fast as he could, Tony turned the ring back to a shorter focal length to try to capture the image of the first ghost. It was female. He was starting to see the shape of her long hair, flowing like a cape down to her waist. He held the candle as close as he dared to the lens, scrambling for more light, until he could feel the heat of its flame. The ghost stopped when she appeared to be four or five feet in front of him. Again, he turned the ring to try to see anything more than her diaphanous shape.

She came sharply into focus with one last push, and Tony gasped, knocking the lens against the candle. Whatever he had been expecting – something recognizable, something pretty, something _human_? – was not what he saw through the dim bronze filter of the eyepiece. Instead of a woman, an emaciated corpse stood before him, naked save for the stringy hair flowing down from the patchwork skin of her skull to shroud her withered flesh and twisted bones. Dead, empty sockets tunnelled into her face where her eyes should have been, and a lipless mouth stretched open as if she were trying to speak.

With a shout, he dropped both the viewer and his candle. The candle was out before it hit the floor, leaving him in vulnerable darkness as he fumbled to find the stair railing. “Loki!” he called down the stairs. “ _Loki!_ ”

Too many racing heartbeats passed before he heard a sound down on the floor below: a door opening, and then footsteps coming up the stairs in time with a bobbing flame.

“Tony?!”

There was Loki, the savior, dressed only in a loose shirt and trousers, wearing an expression on his face as if he expected something terrible to have happened. He ran all the way up the stairs to meet Tony at the top, and wrapped a comforting arm around Tony’s shoulders.

Tony, rattled as he was, gratefully leaned into the embrace to feel the comforting, live, human warmth of Loki’s body against his.

“Mercy, you’re shaking! What happened?”

“I saw, um,” Tony managed through his clenched teeth. “Right over there. By the archway. She was right in front of me. And then more behind her.”

“Ghosts?”

Tony nodded.

“But I thought you wanted to see ghosts?”

So did Tony, until he actually saw one. “I was... I was surprised,” he explained. “I didn’t think... In photographs, they only ever appear as blurs of light. But I saw...”

“You saw one?” Loki asked, in a quieter tone of voice. “As they truly are?”

“I think so.”

“How?”

Wrenching as it was to pull himself away from the shelter of Loki’s arm, Tony retrieved the dropped viewer. The fall had bent one of its antennae, but the lens and eyepiece were undamaged. “Through here. The antennae pick up electromagnetic frequencies and pass them over a specially treated lens, allowing you see what would otherwise be invisible.” Hesitantly, he lifted the eyepiece back up to peer through, bracing himself for the sight of the ghost. But there was nothing. No misty figure, no eyeless skull. “She’s gone now.” He glanced down at the spectrometers on the floor. Both needles had fallen back to their resting positions and registered no activity.

“It was a female ghost?”

“Yes. She had long hair and... sagging, deflated breasts. Like a half-mummified corpse. She was naked.”

“And no eyes.” Loki murmured.

“No eyes,” Tony whispered in agreement. “Just like you told me.” It seemed so long ago, in the distant past, that they shared that conversation in Tony’s workroom. Barely more than a month, and it felt like years. Shaking his head, Tony returned to Loki’s side, and was immediately thankful that Loki once again wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

“You’re pale and shaking,” Loki told him. “I’ll make you a cup of tea to calm your nerves.”

Leaning against him, Tony nodded. “Thank you. Though to be honest, I could use something a lot stronger than tea right now.”

“Shall I make you a cup of whiskey, then?”

“Yes.”


	8. Chapter 8

 

Loki escorted Tony back downstairs and deposited him in his bedroom before going in search of whiskey. Alone, Tony busied himself by building a fire, then shrugged off his coat and sat on the bed to drop his head into his hands. His skin felt cold and clammy. Every muscle in his body still shook. And as much as he wanted to tell himself he was being ridiculous, that there was nothing to worry about, the skeletal face of the ghost-woman stayed burned into the forefront of his memory. As if it were tattooed on his eyelids. Every time he closed his eyes it was there, making a new streak of fear pound through his veins all over again.

When the bedroom door opened, he jumped, even though he knew full well it was only Loki. Loki, with a tray bearing two glasses and a decanter.

“Oh good,” said Tony. “Though I don’t know why you brought two glasses. Just pour yourself one, and I’ll drink whatever’s left straight from the decanter.”

“Thor might object to that.”

“I don’t care. I’ve had a very traumatizing night and need my medicine. Remind me to buy him a new bottle sometime.”

Loki grinned as he sat down on the bed across from Tony, carefully setting the tray between them. “What if we behave as civilized people tonight,” he said as he poured out two glasses, handing the first to Tony, “and drink only a reasonable amount?”

“Nonsense,” Tony replied. Throwing back his glass, he swallowed it all in one mouthful. “I want to get drunk.”

Holding perfectly serious eye contact, Loki looked back at him. Then raised his own glass as if in a momentary salute, and downed all the contents exactly as Tony had done. “Very well. You may drink yourself stupid, and I will follow behind at a more reasonable pace.”

And that was Tony’s exact plan: drink himself stupid. He poured himself and Loki each a second serving, and downed his just as quickly as the first while Loki sat there with a wryly entertained expression, sipping slowly. “You don’t want to get drunk?” Tony asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Why? Afraid you’ll become just like me and do something regrettable?”

Staring over the rim of his glass, Loki let a long pause hang in the air before answering. “Perhaps.”

That one word, spoken low and half whispered, was all it took to change everything and fill the air with a sudden heaviness that Tony could all but feel weighing down on his back. “...Oh,” he managed to force out. A placeholder for more intelligent speech as he looked down into his whiskey. Preoccupied with washing the ghost-memories out of his mind, he hadn’t even spared a thought to the fact that a not-fully-dressed Loki was currently sitting on his bed. Or rather, he _had,_ but had quickly pushed it aside for the sake of his sanity.

And now it was impossible to think of anything else. Obviously he needed to get drunk faster.

“So, um, I was thinking,” he said as he poured himself a third drink while looking anywhere but at Loki, “I’ve nearly run out of all my supplies. I’ll need to make a trip somewhere to purchase more. Do you suppose I could find what I need in Carlisle?”

“Possibly, though I’m not one to ask,” Loki replied. He sounded no less dangerous speaking of these inconsequential things. “Thor may be more knowledgeable; he goes there often for his own supplies and may know of a shop that carries what you need.”

Tony said nothing after that. He nodded, shallowly, with his lips on the glass and the whiskey making its way across his tongue in a slender trickle. After silent minutes, watching Loki’s slow and deliberate sips and listening to the diminishing crackle of the fire, the alcohol was starting to reach his head. Every second that ticked by he could feel it more acutely, wrapping around his brain like a warm, lazy snake. This was usually the part of drunkenness he liked best. The part where he was only somewhat drunk, just starting on his way down the drunken path, and when everything in the world seemed happier and funnier and easier and more entertaining and full of promise. But with Loki there, everything instead felt... anxious. Nothing was funny or happy or easy, but rather it seemed as if he were sitting on the edge of having to make a grave decision, but not knowing what or why. As if he had a task to perform for which he was in no way prepared.

He poured himself a fourth glass. And when he went for a fifth, Loki’s hand reached out to hold his arm back.

“Don’t you think you ought to slow down?”

Staring down at his arm, Tony paused. Loki’s hand felt hot against his skin, even through the fabric of his shirt, holding loosely enough to be gentle but firmly enough to keep him from pulling away. Just above his wrist.

“Let me take that from you,” Loki said. And his free hand took the whiskey glass away, while the one holding Tony’s arm stayed right where it was, radiating heat and certainty.

“Um,” Tony whispered. “Are you... trying to seduce me?” Which was nowhere near what he meant to say, but that was what came out. What he meant to say, he could no longer remember.

“Am I?” Loki asked. He sounded as if he were smiling as he leaned forward and his hand slowly travelled up the length of Tony’s arm. “I don’t think I have to _try_ , my dear Mr. Stark.”

 _No,_ Tony agreed, silently shaking his head. Loki didn’t have to try at all. All Loki needed was one hand, one _touch_ , and Tony was eagerly awaiting whatever might come next. His eyes traced a line up Loki’s sleeve to the collar of his shirt. The top three buttons were undone, leaving a triangular gap that yawned open wider the closer Loki leaned. In that gap, just peeking out beyond the edge of white linen, was half of the tattoo Tony had seen that night in the hallway.

“You have a tattoo,” Tony stated rather than asked. It clearly was a tattoo, not some other mysterious marking, now that he saw it up close: old and not quite skillfully done, with ink that had once been black having faded into uneven charcoal gray. His fingers were almost on it, ready to explore its faintly raised shape, before he thought to ask. “May I?”

“Yes,” Loki murmured.

Pushing Loki’s shirt aside, Tony’s touch skirted over the outline of the tattoo. A circle, roughly two inches in diameter, separated into four quarters by an equal-armed cross. The ink had feathered and bled at the edges, but the symbol was still legible. “Does it have a meaning?”

“Old family symbol,” was all Loki said, elaborating no more than that.

“Old family symbol...” Tony repeated. Mostly to himself, barely making a sound at all. He traced it again: around the circumference, down one arm, across the other, then flattened his palm to cover its whole shape. Loki’s skin felt so warm. Smooth. The only truly welcoming thing he’d encountered so far in this bleak place. He leaned forward, driven by impulse or whiskey or both, and pressed a gentle kiss above the tattoo.

He kissed Loki’s chest, and collarbone, and neck, moving slowly upwards. Loki’s hand moved from his arm to the side of his neck and he tilted his head back at the touch, letting Loki’s lips meet his. Almost too soft to be real: a ghost-touch only. He pressed both of his hands against Loki’s chest to feel its solid presence. “You know you don’t need to go softly or slowly or cautiously,” he whispered into Loki’s breath. “I’m already in bed and halfway drunk and I’ve probably been dreaming of this for, oh, the past month at least.”

“Mm,” Loki murmured back with a little nod. “So you’re not a blushing maiden?”

“Far from it. Very far. So very, very far.”

It took less than a second for Tony to fall back on the bed, unsteady and unable to grab hold of anything other than Loki’s shirt. Loki’s mouth entirely covered his in the kind of kiss that was anything but ghostly, firm and rough and full of life. Loki’s tongue swirled against his teeth and found his lower lip... he let his head drop down and his eyes fall closed to better feel it. He groaned, almost unable to breathe, as Loki’s fingers twisted in his hair.

Loki’s clothing came off easily, and he was naked to the air. And to Tony’s touch. All of that velvet skin, free to wandering caresses under eager hands. Shoulders to back to waist to hips, where Tony could grab tight and pull the two of them closer together. The insistent pressure of Loki’s hard shaft against the front of his trousers drew a shudder of anticipation through Tony’s body. From his lips, teased and tasted by Loki’s tongue, straight down to where all the profane need beat inside him with frenetic energy. The kind of tingling anticipation that only came in moments like these...

He dug his fingernails into Loki’s skin, and Loki bit down hard on his lip with what felt like a smile. Pain quickly melted under the heat of desire as the point of Loki’s tongue traced a line across his cheek from the corner of his mouth to his ear.

“Have you any oil?” Loki whispered. His lips brushed against Tony’s earlobe.

“Um... no,” Tony had to admit.

“Wait here.”

Before Tony could protest, Loki was up from the bed and out the door. Dizzily, Tony sat up. The whiskey tray was still right there beside him, with his empty glass and the partially full decanter. He quickly poured himself a little more for good luck, threw it back, and then stowed the tray out of harm’s way on the floor, because if the decanter somehow got broken he had absolutely no desire to explain to Thor how or why. He unbuttoned and kicked off his trousers, fumbled clumsily with the buttons on his vest, and was halfway through extracting himself from his shirt when Loki returned.

“Let me help with that,” Loki murmured. And in one graceful unveiling he was free and falling back on the bed, with Loki right there on top of him with kisses and touches and...

He let out the most pathetic, needy sound as one of Loki’s hands slid slowly down his belly. Slick with oil, Loki’s fingers probed at his entrance, circling and stroking with just a tease of pressure before pushing inside. Tony bit down on his lip and squeezed his eyes shut to take in the feeling of it. Loki’s touch urged his legs farther apart until he lay vulnerable and exposed but somehow still powerful and invincible. All uncertainty fled. He grasped Loki’s arm to pull him up for a kiss, letting Loki settle against him, body against body, and letting the head of Loki’s cock slowly move in where the hand had been.

Clinging to Loki’s back, he pushed against the momentary resistance until they could move together and find their pace. Tony arched and writhed and Loki followed, each holding the other close with ragged breath and a building need. Faster and less controlled by the second. Until the peak of pleasure snapped inside Tony and he came with a half-swallowed cry, burying his face against Loki’s neck. He stayed like that, gasping for air, as the same tremors wracked Loki’s body and Loki held him tight in crushing embrace.

For a minute, both were unable to speak or move outside of a lazy caress or nuzzling kiss. Loki rolled to the side and lay there another moment, letting Tony’s hand wander up and down his chest as they caught their breath. Then he made a move as if to sit up, but stopped halfway and seemed to reconsider.

“Would you... prefer if I stayed or left?” he asked.

“Mm, stay,” Tony whispered, pressing one more kiss to his outstretched arm. “Of course I want you to stay.”

Otherwise how would he be able to tell when he woke up in the morning that this wasn’t just some fanciful dream?

ooo

Sometime in the night, Tony hazily awoke enough to roll over and situate himself a little more firmly in Loki’s sleeping embrace. He had a clear memory of that: feeling the bare warmth of Loki’s shoulder against his cheek, and inhaling the gentle scent of Loki’s skin. But when he woke again to daylight, Loki was gone. The fire had died and the room was cold. Shivering and groaning, Tony pulled the blankets up over his head and buried his face in his pillow.

He felt awful. Tired and groggy, as if the night’s sleep had done him no good at all. Heavy apathy coursed through his veins, and all he wanted to do was go back to sleep. Which he did, dozing on and off until the clink of approaching dishes and the creak of floorboards told him he should probably lift his head and try to act at least somewhat alert.

“Ah good,” Loki said, carrying a tray of breakfast into the bedroom. “You’re awake.”

“What time is it?” Tony asked.

“Nearly ten. Here; I’ve brought you some breakfast. Eggs. And tea.”

Eggs sounded better than the usual porridge Thor made, and Tony sat up to take the tray as Loki climbed onto the bed to sit beside him. He reached for the teacup before his fork, though, and held it up to his lips to inhale the steam. If anything could clear the fog from his head and make him feel more awake, it would be the black, bitter tea.

“How are you feeling?” Loki asked. “After all that whiskey?”

“Nn,” was all Tony said, to avoid having to explain the state of his mind and body without actual words. He had something of a headache; that much would be due to the whiskey. But otherwise, he felt exhausted more than anything else. As if he’d only managed a few meager hours of sleep instead of almost the whole night. His brain had that same fuzziness he knew all too well from nights spent working followed by mornings that came too quickly. And his body felt weak. Even lifting the teacup to his mouth was a burden.

“I’m going to try again tonight,” he said to change the subject. “Looking for ghosts. Now that I know the equipment works, and I know what to expect...” In the bright light of morning, saying that was so simple, and everything seemed so easy. What did he have to be afraid of? Ghosts? Invisible and impotent ghosts?

He slid his hand over to grasp Loki’s but unlike hunting ghosts, something about that simple action seemed far more daunting in the sober light of day. Loki didn’t pull away, but nor did he seem as open or welcoming as he had just hours earlier. They were in the same room. In the same bed. But something small had shifted, pushing their nighttime intimacy far off into the distance.

With a quick, friendly squeeze and a smile, unable to fully gauge Loki’s acceptance, Tony withdrew his hand.

Sometime around noon, after picking at his eggs as they grew cold and drinking all the tea the pot on his tray held, he managed to roll out of bed and get dressed. He still felt groggy. Even after a shave and a splash of hot water over his face and neck. Even after forcing himself to go outside for a walk around the grounds in hopes that the cold air would snap some sense into him. He shook his head and slapped his hands against his cheeks, but it did only a little good. He felt more awake, but the clouds binding his brain remained.

From his vantage point on a small hill not far from the house, he could see its entire shape against the dull gray background of an overcast sky. The broken, burned-down tower above the front hall was especially easy to see in its entirety from this angle. Charred beams and the remains of cross-frames and shingles stood up like a dead forest against the clouds. Below it, the line of the remaining roof jutted sharply away into the wing on the right side. Returning towards the house, Tony walked around the back, keeping closer to the structure and away from the unnerving noise of the wind turbines. All the curtains had been drawn on the windows of the rooms in the old servants’ quarters. There was smoke coming from the kitchen chimney, meaning somebody was cooking something, though he couldn’t see who at his distance through the small, shadowed windows.

Farther around, at the center back of the house, was the library with its steeply pitched roofline standing two storeys tall at the peak. Beyond that, the other wing of unused and, according to Loki, unsafe bedrooms. The main floor of that wing held some sort of great hall, though Tony had never bothered to look inside, being too preoccupied with the upper levels. He picked his way across uneven grass over to the great hall’s windows. If he stretched and stood on his toes, he could just peer in through a crack in the curtains. The interior glass, though, was too caked with dust to make out any details.

He went back inside to find the door to the great hall. Of all the places Loki told him he should not go, this one was not on the list. Which meant, he reasoned to himself, that it was well within his limits of ghost hunting grounds. He could have a look at it in the daylight, and potentially come back later after dark with his spectrometers.

The corridor leading to the great hall would have to be the one continuing on past the library, and taking a quick turn that way Tony found himself to be right. Just past the library, a large double door of heavy, black wood stood baring the way. He tried the handle. It was locked. And solidly locked, too: the door refused to so much as wiggle when he pushed at it. Kneeling down, he went to peer through the keyhole to see if he could spy anything worth investigating, but stopped as he noticed something on the doorknob plate.

There, embossed into the brass and no bigger than a dime, was a small circle divided into quarters with an even-armed cross.

He pressed his finger to the shape of the circle. Unlike most of the doors in the house, this one had been fitted with a modern style mechanical knob instead of the old latch-styles found elsewhere. What was so important that this door had to remain securely locked? He leaned in, trying to align his eye as closely as possible with the keyhole, but could see only the bulk of some large piece of wooden furniture blocking the view. It was light in there, though. Light enough to make out the pattern of wood grain. Somehow, despite the closed curtains, the room had light.

“If you peek through keyholes,” a voice said behind him, “you might just spy a demon.”

Tony’s heart leapt up in his chest at the sound, and he spun around too fast to control himself and keep his shoulder from banging against the doorknob. “Loki,” he gasped. “I...”

Loki did not look upset to see Tony crouched there by the door. Nor did he look pleased, but then, how often did Loki ever look pleased? The important thing to Tony was that he appeared to be indifferent rather than offended. Standing, Tony tried to look as casual as possible. He had not been doing anything forbidden. Loki had not told him to stay away from this room. Looking through the keyhole had been harmless curiosity; that was all. He had done nothing to warrant feeling so shaken and guilty.

“What’s this room?” he asked in the most conversational tone he could muster.

“It used to be the great hall,” Loki replied. “A ballroom, of sorts.”

“And now? Why is it locked?”

“Part of the roof was destroyed in the fire that burned down the tower. Rain and snow have ruined the floor. It’s not safe.”

Tony nodded. “Ah.” Though he had to wonder, when there were so many other unsafe areas left open, why this room would be specifically locked? With a locking mechanism only decades old, rather than centuries, as compared to the rest of the house?

“Come,” Loki said, beckoning him away from the door. “Thor bought a shank of lamb from one of the nearby farmers this morning. He’s made a stew for a nice, hot dinner.”

Tony followed. In the kitchen, the rich scent of lamb stew filled the air as a welcome departure from the usual bread and beans and sausages, making Tony’s mouth water. He grabbed a bowl and helped himself from the pot on the hearth, then sat at the table on the bench next to Loki.

“It’s nice to see you up during daylight hours again,” Thor commented.

“Oh... yes,” Tony replied. “I let work get the better of my sleeping schedule, but I think I’ll try to keep things more reasonable from now on.”

“Stay up only half the night?” Loki asked.

Was that meant to be a hint of something in Loki’s words? A sly reference? Or nothing but an innocent joke? It was impossible for Tony to tell. “Something like that,” he settled on saying.

He lifted his spoon to his mouth, but a fat glob of gravy-covered peas slipped over the edge and landed on his thigh. Loki and Thor, if they noticed at all, politely pretended they hadn’t, allowing him to quietly wipe it up. He dabbed at his trousers with a napkin.

And something caught his eye. Something made of tarnished brass but gleaming all the same through its dullness. Hanging from a ring affixed to Loki’s trousers was a key with a wide, round bow, embossed with the shape of a circle divided into quarters.


	9. Chapter 9

Loki spent the night in Tony’s bed again. How, Tony wasn’t even sure: it just _happened_ , somehow, meeting in the corridor in the dark and exchanging a few words, innocent at first. Then Loki stepped closer, and Tony felt compelled to shift his stance, and somehow Tony’s hand was at Loki’s waist and Loki’s fingers were in Tony’s hair. They undressed each other at a clumsy speed before falling into bed with Tony’s naked back against the cold sheets and the wonderful, solid weight of Loki’s body on top of him. Tony vividly remembered that part, and the feel of Loki’s skin under his hands, and the way his legs wrapped so easily around Loki’s hips as Loki moved against him in in irresistible rhythm.

He had no memory of rolling over halfway through the night to use Loki’s chest as a pillow. But that was how he woke, with Loki’s hand stroking one side of his face. The other side, pressed against Loki’s bare skin, felt hot and sticky with sweat. He blinked and tried to fall back asleep. His head felt so heavy and weak.

“Tony?”

_Just a minute_ , he tried to say, but it came out jumbled and incoherent.

“I’ll bring you up some breakfast.”

Tony listened rather than watched, keeping his eyes closed and his head firmly on the pillow, as Loki dressed, rebuilt and relit the fire, and left the room. The horrible, foggy feeling from the previous morning was not only back, but worse, leaving him dizzy. And cold, too, as soon as Loki’s body heat left the bed. He rolled over to reach for his watch on the bedside table and check the time, but he must have forgotten to wind it because it had stopped sometime around four in the morning.

Rubbing his eyes, he swung his legs, heavy as lead and just as slow, over the edge of the bed and stumbled over to sit in one of the chairs by the fire. Why in the world did he feel so terrible? This time, he couldn’t possibly blame whiskey or ghosts. It had been just after eleven when he met Loki in the corridor. Add to that half an hour or so for their dalliance, and he still would have been asleep before midnight. Outside, the light looked gray yet bright, meaning Loki hadn’t woken him at an unreasonably early hour. He had slept through the night with no drinking, yet still he felt as if he had not rested at all. A dull ache throbbed behind his eyes and at the base of his skull. Shivers kept shooting through his body despite the warmth of the fire.

By the time Loki returned, he had dozed off uneasily in the chair, plagued by ominous dreams of things he could not see but he knew were there.

Breakfast was eggs again, and toast, and tea, and eating it felt like a thankless chore. Chewing took too much effort as Tony sat in his chair, letting his eyes fall closed so he didn’t have to bother mustering the strength to keep them open.

“Are you tired still?” Loki asked. “Did you not sleep well?”

“Guess I didn’t,” Tony muttered. And added in as a little lie so Loki wouldn’t worry: “I just have a headache. But I’m sure it’ll go away if I sit for a while.”

“Of course. More tea?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I’m sure your sleeping schedule must still be out of alignment after all those nights spent chasing ghosts.”

Tony nodded even though he knew that was nowhere near the whole problem. “Must be.”

He stayed in the chair until the fire burned itself out, then, too tired to build a new one, haphazardly dressed in his clothes from the floor and made his slow way downstairs. He needed to take another walk to clear his head of the maddening fog that made him feel so stupid and lazy. The cold, clean air had helped a little the previous day. Or at least he had tricked himself into thinking it helped, which was good enough. Anything to make him feel even halfway awake or alert. Outside, the sky had the same overcast monotony of gray, dangling the threat of rain over his head, though not quite ready to fulfil that promise. He wrapped his scarf around his face and set out down the driveway in a straight line from the front of the house.

A hundred or so yards away, he stopped and turned back to look at the wing on the left side. Loki had said the roof had been destroyed by fire, letting in the elements to ruin the structural integrity. With the house situated uphill from the driveway, it was hard to make out much of the roof from his low angle. The only other hill of equal elevation, the one he had climbed before, was on the right side of the house, and the burned tower blocked the left wing’s roof from view. He walked more than halfway to the gate, turning every few paces to check his vantage point, before he could see anything.

The roof of the left wing was indeed ruined, as Loki had said. Less obvious than the tower, which stood sharp as nails against the sky, the hole in the left wing was more of a deeper black void in an expanse of already coal-black shingles. It encompassed nearly a third of the roof from the tower outward. So that would be the source of the light in the great hall, except the rooms from the second and third floors would be in the way. Had the hole burned or rotted all the way through? Was that why the left wing was so structurally unsound?

Well, there was only one way to find out.

Either the outdoor air or the sense of purpose in his mind made Tony feel a little less sluggish as he returned to the house and climbed the stairs. He had never felt compelled to open any of the rooms in the left wing, staying to the hallways only. But there were five doors down each side of the hall, a near mirror image to the right side housing his own bedroom. He tried the first door on his left: the side that would be overlooking the front of the house, directly below the hole in the roof. It wasn’t locked.

But nor was there a room on the other side of the door. Instead, where the mirror twin to his workroom should have been, there was nothing more than a shallow closet. The next door was the same. And all the way down the hallway on that side: only closets. He threw open the doors on the opposite side to see where they led, and found the expected bedrooms with windows overlooking the rear of the house. They matched the layout of right wing. But the closets...

The climb up to the third floor was exhausting, but the need to know for certain pushed him on. Up to the left wing, where he had seen the ghosts. And where Loki had explicitly told him not to go, but this was something he needed to see. He grabbed the knob of the first door and pulled it open easily: unlocked.

Another closet full of dusty shelves and a dead beetle stood before him.

“What in the world is going on?” he muttered to himself.

There was something disturbing about all these false doors leading nowhere. They were a lie, built only for symmetry. Why would somebody go to all that trouble? He made his way down the hallway, stepping carefully around uneven floorboards, to open each of the doors. They all opened outward. Unlike the bedroom doors, which opened inward. And they had been built like that originally. Examining the frames, he could tell all of the closets still had their centuries-old latches and hinges. This was no easy fix to board up rooms made unusable by the fire. Whoever designed the house had intentionally eliminated these bedrooms in the original plan.

Which meant, then, that either the great hall was three storeys tall on this side, as he had certainly seen three levels of windows from outside... or something else was in there. Something else that was inaccessible from the main part of the house.

“What’s in the great hall?” he asked as he sat at the supper table with Loki and Thor, speaking casually between mouthfuls of food to try to mask his interest.

Loki had no reaction to the question as he steadily lifted a spoonful of beans to his mouth. But Thor... Thor stiffened, immediately looking over to Loki.

“Nothing,” Loki said, so indifferently it even sounded like the truth. “Rubble from the roof, charred wood, likely a few dead birds and mice. Years of dust and mold, I’d imagine.”

“I should probably have a look anyhow,” said Tony. “I’d like to be thorough in my study of the house.”

Thor silently kept his eyes on Loki as Loki shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“I told you before. The floor is ruined. The structure is rotten from all the rain and snow coming in. It’s not safe.”

“Is it three storeys tall?”

At that, Loki looked up with an unreadable expression on his face. “Yes. Why?”

“Just something I noticed today,” Tony answered with a shrug. “There are three levels of windows on the front of the house. Yet all the doors on that side in the second- and third-floor hallways lead to closets. I thought that was an odd feature to have in a house like this. Why bother with so many closets? Why bother with all those doors leading essentially nowhere? Is it just for symmetry?”

Loki and Thor exchanged a glance. “Somewhat, yes,” Loki said after a drawn-out moment of silence. “The doors were built so the corridors would have a pleasing symmetry. But the closets were originally balconies. They overlooked the hall, which was a vast space, beautiful and open and full of light from all the windows. We walled the balconies in and converted them to closets after the roof was destroyed and the hall fell out of use.”

“I’d still like to see it.”

“No,” said Thor, finally speaking. “Loki is right. The hall is unsafe. It hasn’t been used in years. There’s nothing in there to be seen except for empty, wasted space. It’s better left alone.”

Maybe it was. But Tony had no intention of leaving it alone. He ate the rest of his meal in peace, steering the conversation over to safer and more boring topics like the dismal, gray weather and his lack of photography supplies. But afterward, leaving the kitchen and following Loki upstairs, he had to ask again.

“What if I only looked inside? I don’t need to go into the hall. I only want to _see_ it.”

“Why?” Loki asked, stopping in the middle of the staircase and sounding as if he teetered on the verge of annoyance. “Why this sudden obsession?”

“I don’t know. But it can’t hurt, can it? If it used to be used as a ballroom or banquet hall, as you said, it might be a nexus for ghosts, drawn to all that energy of years past. People say ghosts are drawn to places where they had emotional connections in life. Places where memorable things happened. I think it’s worth a try.”

“I don’t,” said Loki. “The hall was rarely used. And besides,” he added, “it’s been locked up for years. I don’t think I even know where the key is.”

A blatant lie. The key was hanging right there on the ring at Loki’s waist.

“I’ve been in all the other areas of the house,” Tony argued. “If I want to be thorough-”

“You’ve not been in the cellar,” Loki interrupted. “Have you?”

“No. But-”

“And you’ve not been in my bedroom.”

Tony took one step up, standing only two stairs below Loki, and stopped there. “...Is that an observation or an invitation?” he asked. “Or just a ploy to derail my interest in the hall?”

Loki’s sly smile provided a satisfactory answer to neither of those questions. And yet, as Loki turned and began making his way once again up the staircase, Tony found he did not exactly care. He followed after Loki as quickly as his tired legs would allow. Past his own bedroom. And over to Loki’s door, which Loki pushed shut behind them before grabbing Tony by the back of his neck and pulling him into the kind of kiss that could easily make a person forget the great hall, all the house’s ghosts, and everything else that could occupy one’s mind.

ooo

The ghost standing at the foot of Loki’s bed had hair in two long braids hanging over her shoulders. Her skin, dry and yellow, was pulled taut over her skeletal form. Stick-thin arms reached out to Tony, jerky and quick as spider’s legs, as if she had forgotten how to move like a human. Her fingers curled into gnarled, disjointed shapes.

Did she want Tony to follow her? Somehow, he knew she did.

He slipped out of bed, feet landing on mist instead of the wooden floor. All around him, the walls and ceiling of the bedroom pulsed and swayed in time with the sound of the wind turbines. It was almost deafeningly loud. He floated rather than stepped forward, uselessly moving his legs through the mist like treading water as he followed the ghost out through the bedroom door and in to the hallway. She turned towards the left wing and paused a moment at the first closet, waiting for Tony, before dissolving into the wooden door and disappearing.

Tony looked up. The roof of the house had disappeared; there was only white-gray mist above him, making everything both dull and bright. He could plainly see every detail of the closet door that was normally too dark to notice. The wood grain flowed in a circle, and within the circle was an even-armed cross dividing it into quarters. As soon as he pressed his hand to the center of the cross, the closet door dissolved.

But there was no closet on the other side.   The door opened into a vast room: a room without a roof, where snow was coming down. And Tony suddenly found himself standing before a giant tree growing up through the floor. It looked half dead and its branches grew crooked, bearing only a few brown leaves and shriveled apples. The ghost stood beneath the falling leaves. As Tony watched, a knife materialized in her hand, and she slit her own throat before he even had time to open his mouth to shout at her to stop. Instead of blood, white smoke poured out of the wound.

Running away took forever. His legs could barely move through the mist that was now thickened by the ghost’s smoke-blood, and no matter which way he went, the tree was always in front of him. Every struggling step brought him closer to its wizened trunk. He could almost touch it. Feel its blackened limbs... When he reached out, a branch was there, and his grip closed around something solid and cold.

He snapped awake to the sound of his name as his hands clung to the edge of a shelf in the closet.

Loki was shaking his shoulder. “Tony!”

Letting go of the shelf, Tony barely noticed he was falling until Loki caught him. “What...” he managed to croak.

“You were sleepwalking. You left the bed and came out here and then just... stood there. Staring in the closet.”

“It was a dream,” Tony whispered.   Obviously. It had to be. The ghost, the room, the tree, the smoke...

As if he were no more than a small child, Loki carried him back to bed and tucked him under the blankets. “What did you dream?” Loki asked.

Tony closed his eyes. He felt so tired. The mist from the dream had filled his head, making everything so hazy. “I saw a ghost,” he said. He couldn’t speak above a whisper even if he wanted to. “She was... she was at the foot of your bed. And the room was full of mist and the sound of the wind turbines... I followed her to the closet. But it wasn’t a closet. The door opened to a room that had this... this tree, this huge tree, growing up through the floor. Then the ghost slit her throat but instead of blood there was smoke and... the symbol was on the closet door. The crossed circle. The same as your tattoo and the doorknob plate on the great hall.”

He forced his eyes open to look up at Loki, who stared back down at him with an expression that could be nothing less than shock. At least for a moment, until Loki’s jaw clenched and all those tiny muscles moved beneath his skin to settle his face back into its usual stoic mask. “How strange,” he softly said. “That sounds like a terrible nightmare.”

But it hadn’t been a nightmare. Not really. Though bizarre and disturbing, it had felt more like a message than anything else. Had the ghost been trying to say or show something?

Tony closed his eyes again. He was too exhausted to think about it. In the morning... he would think about it in the morning. But it seemed, for the rest of the night, that he couldn’t fall back asleep no matter what he did. Or, if he did in fact manage to fall asleep, he dreamed that he still lay awake. Whichever it was, lying sleepless or restless dreaming, it drained whatever dwindling reserves of energy he had left. By the time the sun rose, his head ached with the pressure of exhaustion and his entire body shuddered with cold no matter how tightly he wrapped the blankets around himself while cuddling closer to Loki.

Once again, Loki brought him eggs and tea for breakfast, which he ate and drank with leaden arms even though he felt neither hungry nor thirsty. Even the tea did nothing to warm him inside. He still shivered as he pulled on his clothes, cold fingers struggling with buttons. An undershirt, shirt, vest, and jacket felt like far too few layers, and all of it light-woven cotton in contrast to Loki’s heavy brocades and velveteens.

“Are you feeling unwell again?” Loki asked him as he leaned in as close as he dared to the fire, trying to absorb any of its warmth.

“I slept poorly,” he replied. “Have a headache.”

But that wasn’t all. It wasn’t only a headache, or only exhaustion, or only feeling a chill. It was some form of illness creeping up on him. He was sure of it now. He’d had headaches before, when he first arrived, and he’d been tired from his erratic sleep schedule, and he’d been cold in the house. But never to this extent. For the past several days his health had been steadily declining, with deepening symptoms beyond what could be explained away as the result of a poor night’s sleep or too much drink. He was ill, and he was only getting worse.

“Stay there by the fire as long as you like,” said Loki. “Can I bring you anything?”

Tony shook his head. No. There was nothing he needed except sleep. And maybe... He closed his eyes. He needed Bruce. He needed a doctor, who might be able to tell him what was wrong and what to do, but more than anything he desperately needed somebody to _talk_ to. Somebody who wasn’t Loki and wasn’t Thor that he could burden with all his ridiculous ideas and theories and worries and outlandish speculations. Somebody who would tell him he was overreacting to the locked door on the great hall, and that there was a perfectly valid explanation for Loki lying about having lost the key. He needed somebody he could trust. He missed Bruce’s pragmatic presence so much it hurt.

_What would Bruce say?_ he asked himself as he leaned back in the chair by the fire and tried to find a comfortable position for his throbbing head. _If I told him what was wrong..._

Bruce would say to get more rest. Eat more vegetables and fruits. Drink water. No alcohol. Go to sleep at a decent hour. Try to manage a bit of fresh air and exercise every day.

On that first count, he was trying. Maybe it would be a good idea to simply crawl back into bed and lie there until his brain bored itself into sleep. Did he need to be awake and dressed? No. He had nothing to do with no photography supplies, and he would continue having nothing to do until he felt well enough to drive to Carlisle. Going back to bed therefore seemed like the only reasonable option.

For point two, he would have to ask Loki if vegetables were even a possibility. They had boiled carrots and potatoes, but Tony had eaten nothing fresh or green since leaving the Oceanic. It left him feeling halfway willing to strangle somebody for a cucumber. Or even a plain old apple.

As for water, that at least he had in abundance. And he’d touched no drink since the night with the whiskey. Did he go to sleep at a decent hour? He’d been trying to. The addition of Loki to his nighttime routine of late made that point somewhat debatable. And he had been outside for a walk around the grounds on both of the previous two days. The fresh air and exercise had indeed made him feel somewhat better. So perhaps that would be his plan for the day: a quick walk outside, and then back to bed. If he felt restless in the afternoon, he could take another walk.

He fished his watch out of his pocket to check the time: not quite ten thirty. But it slipped out of his clumsy grip as he tried to put it back, bouncing on its edge on the floor and rolling under the bed.

“Of course...” Tony muttered. His legs were stiff and uncooperative as he bent down, and his back ached. On his hands and knees, he reached under the bed and felt blindly in the direction the watch had rolled. His fingers quickly found it. And they also felt something else. Something small and hard was stuck between two floorboards: something too symmetrical and smooth to be a pebble. He picked at the edge with his fingernail until it came free, and pulled it out along with his watch.

It was an earring. A small, gold earring with a red stone in it, hardly larger than a pinhead. It looked relatively new, and modern, like something Pepper might wear.

Which naturally begged the question: why was there a woman’s earring under Loki’s bed?

A sensation of unease began to stir in Tony’s stomach. Had this earring belonged to the ghost he saw in his dream? The one who had stood at the foot of the bed, and coaxed him into the hallway, and who had slit her own throat? Had she once lived in this room? Had she been Loki’s wife?

But surely, if Loki had been married, he would have said something? Wouldn’t he?

_Would_ he?

Tony had to lean against the chair. The strange feeling in his stomach had spread to his legs, making him weak. No, Loki wouldn’t have said anything about having been married, because Loki never said anything about anything, and certainly never said anything about himself. Tony still had no idea as to how old he was, or what his parents’ names had been, or when they had died, or how old Thor was, or whether they had any living relatives...

Shoving both his watch and the earring down into his pocket, Tony gave himself a shake to stop that line of thinking. This was why he needed Bruce. To stop himself from jumping to absurd conclusions. There was probably a perfectly normal explanation for that earring, such as it having belonged to Loki’s mother, or a visiting aunt or cousin. Either of those scenarios would be far more likely than Loki having a secret dead wife when absolutely nothing else in the house gave evidence to that being the case. Surely if Loki had ever been married there would be a picture somewhere. Some little portrait or memento or keepsake.

Maybe that would be something to ask Loki about later. Or maybe it would be something to forget entirely and never mention, in the interest of not sounding like a jealous idiot.

That would be the better option, Tony decided as he made his way out of the room in slow, unsteady steps. He had more important things to worry about than an earring. He had his health. He had his work. And he had a newfound need to find out everything he could about Loki.

ooo

Tony managed to walk only halfway around the house before weakness in his legs and shortness of breath forced him back inside through the kitchen door. Chilled through from even that short time out in the wind, he ran himself a bath in hopes that the hot water would have some sort of healing effect. It did not. No matter how hot he ran it – hot enough to steam up the mirror, and hot enough to turn his skin bright pink – the heat still couldn’t penetrate deeply enough into his body to thaw the cold that lay in his bones. He couldn’t stop himself from shivering.

So, after drinking the tea and broth Loki brought him in the early afternoon and swallowing two Aspirin tablets to combat the oncoming fever, he wrapped himself in blankets and sat in one of the chairs by the fire, trying to sleep but ultimately only dozing in and out of troubled consciousness. Every time he fell asleep, the sounds of growing wind storms and groaning turbines pulled him back awake. Or a burned-out log collapsed in the fire, sending a snap of sparks up the chimney. Or somebody closed a door downstairs, or feet made the staircase creak. Every tiny sound might as well have been a cannon blast, jolting Tony out of his incomplete sleep.

Loki brought him more tea and broth for supper, with a side of bread he barely touched. Then one of Loki’s arms wrapped around his back, and the other slid under his knees to lift him to bed.

“Don’t,” Tony murmured.

Loki stopped trying to lift him, but didn’t pull away. “You want to stay a little longer by the fire?”

“I want to stay here all night. I can’t go to bed. It’s too cold.”

“I’ll be with you,” Loki whispered to his ear.

“That’s not a good idea...”

“Why not?”

Inhaling, Tony let the air fill his lungs, hoping it give him any kind of strength. It didn’t. “I’m... not well, Loki. Not at all.”

“You have a bit of a chill. Nothing to worry about. It’ll be gone in no time.”

“It’s worse than that. I feel... I don’t even know. You shouldn’t be in here with me.”

“Of course I should be. I need to take care of you.”

“No. Loki, I’m serious.” Lifting his head, he managed to make eye contact, though his vision was so hard to focus and his thoughts were almost as difficult to forge into speech. “Bring me tea and broth if you want, but you shouldn’t be spending any more time with me than you have to. You’ve been with me too much already. I thought I was just tired, but now today I know that’s not it. I know it’s more than that. And if you get sick too, because of me...”

He let his voice trail off as Loki stood up and took a step back, eyebrows coming together over a slight frown. “You shouldn’t worry about that,” Loki said.

“But I _am_ worried,” said Tony. “I have half the symptoms of influenza. Or this could be something else just as bad. But whatever it is, I don’t want to pass it on to you. I could have already, but if I haven’t, I don’t want to take any more risks. If you get sick because of me? If you _die_ because of me? I don’t know what I’d do. I care about you too much, Loki.”

Loki took another step back, and this time his expression changed from mild concern to outright surprise. “What do you...” he began, but couldn’t seem to finish the sentence.

Tony’s head hurt too much. He had to close his eyes. Every thought felt too fat and bloated, rolling around in his mind collecting extra weight and confusion when what he really needed were trim, concise words to say what he needed to say to Loki. To be rational and persuasive. To arrange coherent sentences out of all the insubstantial ideas passing through his brain. And there was something else, too, wasn’t there? Something he thought of earlier that he wanted to bring up with Loki? Or ask about? It was something... something...

Something he couldn’t remember. Maybe it would come back.

“We’re friends, Loki, aren’t we?” he said instead, trying to at least get through the one thing he knew he needed to say. “More than friends? Maybe? I hope so. I know hardly anything about you or your life or your past or even what you like or don’t like, but I still care about you. And I assume you care about me, too, otherwise you wouldn’t be here right now trying to make sure I eat my meals and get some rest. I think if you were the one who was ill I’d be doing the exact same thing, bringing you tea and soup and trying to spend time with you and make sure you were comfortable, but I’m asking you to please, _please_ stay away. If you do care about me, you’ll respect my request and keep yourself safe. At least for now. At least for a few days until we see if I start to get any better. I may be overreacting and it may be just a cold. It could be that in a few days I feel fine again, in which case I will very happily let you tuck me into bed whenever you like. Actually I’d be sad if you didn’t. But for now... please look after yourself. I don’t want you getting sick, too. I don’t.”

He forced his eyes open again to see Loki staring sadly back at him. “It’s not worth the risk,” he added, to which Loki replied with a shallow nod while holding onto that odd, sad, and yet still somewhat disbelieving expression.

“I’ll, um, leave your supper tray on the table,” Loki said. Standing, he glanced from Tony to the floor to the fire and back, as if he couldn’t make up his mind on where to look. “Try to eat everything. It will give you strength. I’ll come back in a few hours to stoke up the fire and make sure you stay warm enough. Will you need anything else?”

Tony shook his head as much as he could. “No. I don’t think so. Thank you.”

In one final gesture of intimacy, Loki placed a hand on Tony’s cheek, and those fingers felt so beautifully warm against his shivering skin that Tony couldn’t even complain about the danger of such a touch.   Nor could he stop himself from softly kissing Loki’s palm as it brushed his lips.

“I hope to see you when you feel better,” Loki whispered before disappearing.


	10. Chapter 10

True to Tony’s wishes, Loki did not try to see him again, and if Loki did come back to add more wood to the fire that night, Tony slept through it. He awoke in the morning still huddled in his chair-nest, with a new tray of cold tea and eggs and beans waiting for him on the table. A note on the tray read, _You need to eat all of this_ , and was signed, _Loki._

Tony complied. As much of a burden as it was to lift a fork when he felt hardly hungry at all, he followed Loki’s request and ate all his breakfast and drank the entire pot of tea. He shuffled to the bathroom at the end of the hall to take a piss and splash some water over his clammy face, then returned to the fire to sleep until a tray of lukewarm mutton stew and more tea magically appeared in the early afternoon. Another note ordered him to eat it all, and he once again did as he was told.

By the time he woke up to the supper tray of more beans and a fried sausage (with the omnipresent tea), the deep-seated chill had left his bones and he felt warm enough to climb into bed for the kind of solid sleep that can only happen while lying down. And he did sleep solidly, until the sound of Loki bringing him his breakfast put an end to a blissfully dreamless, restful night.

“Good morning,” Loki said, noticing that he was awake. “You left your seat by the fire – I take it that’s a good sign?”

“Mm,” Tony replied. “I’ve stopped shivering and I do feel a little better. Still tired but... improving.”

“Good. I’ve brought you an extra egg this morning, and a bit of leftover sausage from last night’s supper. It’ll help you regain your strength.”

Tony doubted the medical accuracy of that statement, but he ate everything to make Loki happy, and drank his tea, then went back to sleep. When Loki brought his dinner he asked about the possibility of fresh vegetables, which resulted in a neat stack of uncooked carrot slices added to his supper tray. The carrots were old and starting to go bitter, but they were something at least: something with a feeling of life amid all the bleak pre-winter gray and brown that dominated the landscape. After supper he managed a bath, followed by another full night’s sleep that left him feeling well enough to request a few books from Loki during the daily bringing of the breakfast.

That day, he read a battered old copy of Robinson Crusoe between naps. For a few hours in the afternoon, Loki brought a book to sit and read alongside him, though at a safe distance, sitting only in a chair next to the bed. Not even close enough to touch hands. Twice, Tony almost said something, but stopped himself. After the argument he put up about Loki staying away, he’d look like a hypocrite trying to go back on that when he was still too weak to do anything more than bathe himself and too tired to go more than three or four hours without sleeping. Returning to cuddling terms would take a few more days.

He napped again before supper, and woke to the usual sound of the clinking meal tray, accompanied by the unusual sound of Thor’s voice out in the hallway.

“How much longer?” Thor asked.

And Loki replied, “I don’t know.”

“How? How can you not know?”

“I have everything under control. Stop worrying.”

“This has been dragging on for-”

“I know what I’m doing, Thor!” Loki snapped. Then, in a softer hiss, “Go back downstairs! You’ll wake him up with your noise.”

A moment later, Loki appeared in the doorway carrying the supper tray. He showed no signs of concern at seeing Tony awake. But nor did he ever really show any signs of anything.

“What was that?” Tony asked, trying to push down the strange feeling that he had overheard something he shouldn’t have.

“Nothing,” Loki said. “Thor is overly concerned for your wellbeing, and is convinced I’m doing a poor job of looking after you. I tried to explain to him your request that I keep my distance for fear of catching your illness, but he can’t seem to understand that concept. If I’m not attending to you at every waking hour, apparently this means I’m failing in my duties.”

Tony shrugged.   “Well, I am feeling a little better. So if you wanted to be slightly more attentive...”

“No. I’m sorry.” Smirking, Loki set the tray down on Tony’s lap. “I have very strict orders from a very important friend that I am to leave you alone until you have recovered.”

“I’m partially recovered,” Tony muttered as he picked up his fork.

“And perhaps in a few days you will be fully recovered. Until then, I will leave you in peace.”

“You don’t even want to sit on the other side of the bed and talk for a bit?”

Loki, halfway back to the door, stopped and turned around. “I suppose I could,” he allowed. Slowly, he returned to the bed to perch on the lower corner like a cat. “Talking isn’t touching, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Tony agreed. “And anyhow, I have something I wanted to ask you about. I still do need to go to Carlisle for more supplies. I want to go as soon as possible. And I want you to come with me. I was thinking we could make a nice trip of it and spend a few days. Just for a change of scenery, you know? Go somewhere a little more, er, lively. Not that I don’t love your haunted house, I mean, but it would be nice to have a break, wouldn’t it?”

“Once you’re well enough to drive?”

“Exactly, yes. I’m feeling better today than I was yesterday, and was feeling better yesterday than the day before. Two or three more days and I should be fine.”

Nodding in thought, Loki looked away. “What you _should_ do,” he said after a pause, “is drive to Carlisle and have a train take you as far away from this dreadful place as you can go. All the way to Southampton, and wait there until you can find a ship back to New York. That’s what you’d do, if you knew...”

“If I knew what?” Tony asked.

Another pause rang through the silence of the room before Loki spoke again. “If you knew what the winters here were like,” he said at last with a little shake of his head. “Howling wind and driving snow, and a dampness that never seems to freeze no matter how cold the air, leeching the warmth right out of your skin until you feel like you’ll never be warm again... You’ve already fallen ill and it’s not even the end of November. It’ll be worse when winter truly arrives. Leave now while you still can.”

“Would you come with me?”

“To Carlisle?”

“To Southampton. And back to Buffalo. Or maybe not Buffalo. Maybe we’d stay in New York City. Or we could keep going clear across the country and end up in California. I always thought San Francisco sounded promising.”

“You know I can’t do that,” Loki said, looking back in Tony’s direction. “I can’t leave Thor.”

“Then Thor can come along.”

“And what? Abandon this house? Leave everything we have?”

“Yeah,” said Tony. “Why not? Loki, this place is falling apart and you have no way to fix it. The roof could collapse, the floor could give out, there could be another lightning storm... What do you have keeping you here? Your name? Family history? Those’ll stay with you no matter where you go.”

“We haven’t the money to start over elsewhere.”

“So? Thousands of people come to America every year with hardly anything more than the clothes on their backs. They find a job, find a place to stay, and start a new life. Who says you can’t do the same? If Thor’s good with mechanics and builds those storage batteries, he could easily find work in manufacturing. You could work as an office clerk. They’re not glamorous jobs, but they’re sure better than rotting away here, complaining about how awful this place is in one breath and then turning around claiming you can’t leave in the next. I say you make a clean break of it before things here get worse.”

In the following quiet moments, Loki said nothing and made no sound. Not even a breath. Tony, watching for hints of any expression in Loki’s eyes, stayed likewise silent. Until Loki answered in a muted voice, “I would like to leave. You know I’ve thought of it; I told you so on the ship. But.”

“But?” Tony asked.

Standing, Loki refused to make any further eye contact as he walked to the door. “But it’s not a possibility in the foreseeable future.” The tone to his voice made it sound like he was quoting somebody – probably Thor. “We need to stay here for now.”

As soon as Loki left, Tony sunk down into the bed and pulled the covers up around his shoulders. Could he really be surprised at Loki’s answer? No. Everything he had said about going back to America had been on a whim, and Loki was only being sensible to turn it down. Tony knew first-hand how daunting it was to abandon everything and set out for an unknown destination. And his journey was by no means a permanent life change. He had planned this as a temporary relocation. Plus, he had money enough to support himself no matter the circumstances, and a home to return to at any time should the need arise. He had all of those safety nets, and yet he still remembered the feeling of panic that washed over him aboard the Oceanic as he questioned every decision he had made.

Loki and Thor had no money, and would have no home to return to if they abandoned the house. They would lose everything to the unknown. As crumbling as their quality of life here was, at least it was predictable and constant. So how could he expect Loki to blindly jump at the opportunity to follow him back across the sea?

He couldn’t. But maybe he could still hope that Loki might one day make that decision.

ooo

Five days after confining himself to bedrest, Tony felt well enough to dress and venture downstairs. Fatigue and mental cloudiness still lingered, but after reaching the point of believing he’d lose his mind if he spent one more hour in his bedroom, he knew it was time to get up. He put on a full suit of clothes and went down to sit at the breakfast table and shed his invalid status. Loki gave him extra food.   Thor gruffly asked about his wellbeing, but otherwise made no conversation.

The next day, through a combination of logical persuasion and relentless pestering, he convinced Loki to drive with him to Carlisle.

By horse and buggy, the drive to Carlisle took nearly three hours, and by automobile it was just as slow, rolling down the muddy, rutted country roads through wind and rain that felt cold enough to turn to snow at any minute. But Tony, wearing two coats and two scarves and having tucked a wool blanket around both his and Loki’s legs, was happy to be out of the house despite the miserable weather. It felt better to be out in the open air. And maybe it was only a psychological improvement, but _he_ felt better. He felt more awake and alert watching the crawling passage of the countryside than staring at oppressive, dark walls indoors.

His only concern was that every time he went to lean against Loki’s arm, or hold Loki’s hand, or shift closer to Loki so that their legs were touching, Loki would subtly move away. Not immediately, and not obviously: it was always a careful little escape after a few moments of acceptance. If Tony tried to hold his hand, he would allow it for a minute, and then pull free under the pretence of needing to cover his mouth as he coughed. Then he rested his hand back in his lap. Or, if Tony slid a little closer on the bench seat, Loki would let a bump in the road jostle them apart again. It was too choreographed to be accidental, but too perfectly believable for Tony to be able to say anything without the inevitable retort from Loki that he was being foolish and reading too much into nothing.

He opted to ignore it until they reached Carlisle and secured a hotel room. But once they were behind closed doors... He lost no time in pushing Loki up against the wall and kissing him, hard, with one hand on the small of Loki’s back and the other reaching up to grasp his neck.

Loki allowed it. For a moment, he returned the kiss and gave Tony’s arm a gentle caress. But then he turned his head to the side, breaking away, and said, “We shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” Tony asked.

“Somebody might see.”

It was such a stupid excuse Tony had to laugh out loud. “See? Who could possibly see?” He held out both arms to gesture widely to everything in the room: two narrow beds, two chairs, a dressing table, a kerosene lamp, a window with the curtains drawn, and one locked door. “Who else is in here besides us? Who can see through the curtains? Who’s going to unbolt the door?”

“I don’t know,” Loki sighed. “I just don’t feel right.”

“About kissing in this room, or about me?”

Giving no answer, Loki weaseled away out of Tony’s arms to busy himself taking off his coat.

“You don’t feel right about what, Loki?” Tony asked again. “You don’t feel right about being here with me? Or maybe you don’t feel right about being with me at all? Is that it? Have you changed your mind on something?”

“You’re being-”

Tony cut him off. “No I’m not. Whatever you’re going to say – ridiculous, stupid, crazy – I’m not. You’ve been acting like this all day. Actually, you know what? Longer than that. Last week you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself, then I told you to stay away until I was over my illness and boy did you. You stayed away real well. And never came back. So that’s why I feel like I have to ask if something’s changed. Because something has; I just don’t know what.”

“Nothing has-”

“Yes,” Tony said, maybe louder than he should have. “Something has changed. And that’s fine, if you’ve decided this isn’t for you and don’t want to keep going. I’d just appreciate if you’d _tell me_ so I don’t keep chasing after you without a hope. If you’re done, tell me. I won’t push it. It’s okay, Loki. But I want to know.”

“It’s not like that,” Loki said, halfway turning back so Tony could at least see the side of his face.

“Then tell me what it _is_ like.”

“It’s... too many things to have to explain. You wouldn’t understand.”

“That’s a side-stepping excuse. Maybe I would understand.”

“It’s Thor and the house and...”

“And what?” pressed Tony. “What about Thor and the house? You’re worried he won’t accept us? You want to leave but he doesn’t? If you take a minute to tell me the problem, maybe I can help you think of a solution.”

Whatever Loki muttered under his breath, it sounded like ‘There isn’t a solution’.

“Loki...”

“I meant what I said the other day. You should return to America.”

“Yeah, and I meant what I said, too,” Tony replied. “You should come with me.”

“Tony, I can’t.”

Half a minute passed by as Tony waited for Loki to elaborate at all, but nothing was forthcoming. “Fine,” Tony eventually said, clapping his hands against his thighs. “You’re putting a lot of effort into excuses and avoiding my questions, so I’ll take that as sign you want me to leave you alone. Consider it done. I won’t bother you any more. And seeing how I paid for this room,” he added as he pulled off his two coats and then threw them across one of the beds, “I get the bed by the window.”

He was partway through unbuttoning his vest when Loki grabbed him by the shoulders, spinning him around and catching him in a kiss that was almost violent in its need. Loki’s embrace crushed him and held him so close he could barely breathe, while lips pushed against his and Loki’s tongue slipped past his teeth. He groaned as the ripple of pleasure flooded through his body right down to his fingertips and tingled across his scalp. However long Loki kissed him, he couldn’t tell, but he had to gasp for breath when Loki finally pulled away. He lean weakly against Loki’s chest.

Loki pressed one more kiss to his cheek. “I’m not trying to avoid you, Tony,” Loki whispered. “It’s only... I don’t know what to do. I know what I want. But I don’t know if what I want is possible. I need to spend time, a lot of time, thinking this through. Until then, I need to avoid giving myself, or you, any false hope. Do you understand?”

Too stunned to properly answer, Tony whispered back, “...Yes?”

“I’m not trying to push you away. I don’t mean to make you think I no longer wish to be with you. And if I seem distant, it is only because I... I do care about you, and I wish to prevent you from being hurt until I know what to do.”

“What if I’m fine with getting hurt?” Tony mumbled into Loki’s lapel.

One pausing breath turned into two, then three, then six before Loki answered. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

ooo

For three nights, they enjoyed a pleasant, if chaste, stay in Carlisle. Tony had no luck locating a supplier of untreated celluloid film in the city, meaning he had to settle for pre-prepared commercial stock. But it was better than nothing. And they did visit a post office, allowing him to send catalogue order form to London for what he needed. Whether or not it would arrive before spring was then the question, given the rural postal depot Loki told him to list as the delivery address, but at least it was ordered and he could hope for the best.

Photo paper and chemicals for film and print developing were easier finds. Tony bought as much as he could safely tie to the back of the Oldsmobile, giving him a supply that would last at least a year if he was sensible and a good several months if he was not. He secured everything in two crates, packed tightly with straw for safety on the roads, and covered it all with an oilcloth tarp to keep out the rain.

“I’m going to miss this place,” he said as he climbed up into the driver’s seat beside Loki.

“You’re going to miss that cramped, noisy hotel?”

“Yes. And do you know why? Because it was _warm_. And there were _people_. And I had a _tomato_ with breakfast.” He grinned over at Loki. “Actually, I have a great idea right now. We should stop at a greengrocer’s and buy some vegetables. And a butcher to get a nice cut of meat for supper. And a baker for some good bread. In fact, I think we should stop everywhere and buy everything before we head back to the haunted hills.”

“How much money have you spent in the last three days?” Loki sighed.

“I don’t know,” said Tony. “I don’t like to get that involved.”

It was well after noon by the time they left the city, with all the food Tony insisted on buying tucked into the crates and snugged under the tarp. Rain fell steadily on the drive, turning the roads into a wash of mud and making the normally slow progress even slower. And halfway home, snow started to replace the rain.

By the time they finally arrived, stumbling in through the kitchen door from the carriage house, the overcast sky had turned a dark charcoal gray and two inches of soggy snow lay in an uneven blanket over the grass. They dumped the first crate on the table, went back for the second, and returned to find Thor standing there with a look as dark as the sky clouding his face.

“Oh, Thor,” Loki greeted him airily as they deposited the second crate. “How have things been here?”

“Where were you?” Thor growled.

“Carlisle. I told you before we left.”

“You’ve been gone four days!”

“Yes,” said Loki, “and I told you four day ago we’d be gone some time.”

“And you think this is perfectly fine?!” Thor demanded, smacking his hand down on the tabletop. “You simply disappear for four days, out into the wilderness, in the middle of a snowstorm?!”

For all of Thor’s explosive anger, Loki faced him head on with an equal measure of calmness. “You’re overreacting. Snow is lightly falling; it’s by no means a storm. We made it home safely.”

“And what if you hadn’t?!” shouted Thor. “What if the snow had started earlier, or come down faster? Where would you be now?”

“Likely still in Carlisle, or, at worst, begging a room for the night at a farmhouse along the road,” Loki answered. Then turned to Tony. “Why don’t you start unpacking everything, and take your supplies upstairs?”

Nodding, Tony glanced from Loki to Thor. Thor, he noticed, hadn’t looked at him once so far. Everything Thor said, and all the rage he held, was directed purely at Loki. And as much as Tony hated abandoning Loki at the start of a fight, it felt, in this case, as if things would go more smoothly if he weren’t there to get in the way. He grabbed his boxes of film and paper, and quickly made his exit. Upstairs in the work room, he could still hear escalating shouts, but no clearly defined words. Just as well. Whatever awful things Loki and Thor said to each other, he didn’t want to know.

Ten minutes later, after a brief interlude of silence, Loki appeared in the doorway. “Allow me to apologize for my brother’s behavior,” he said. “Thor can be very... passionate at times.”

“He shouldn’t have yelled at you like that,” said Tony. “He’s not your jailer. You have every right to do whatever you want with your life.”

“No, but he was worried, and...”

“And what?” Tony asked. “You told him we were going to Carlisle, and we’d be gone for a few days. Getting angry at you for doing exactly what you said you were going to do it is out of line.”

“What he said about the snow is true, though,” Loki countered. “If we’d been caught in a storm-”

“But we weren’t. We’re fine. Like you said. There’s nothing to worry about. He’s overreacting and being a total ass.”

“I know,” Loki muttered. “You’re right. But that’s just how Thor is. We’ve been on our own, just the two of us, for so long, and he sees it as his role to be the protector of the family. He keeps us safe, and ensures our traditions live on and the family honor remains.”

“Oh yeah?” Tony asked, wondering what else he could say to such a strange statement. “And what’s your role, then?”

Even quieter than before, Loki replied, “I do whatever I need to do to help him.”

“Like what?” Tony asked. And when Loki said nothing, he prompted again: “Like what, Loki?”

Instead of speaking, Loki just held out his hand, inviting Tony to step closer. Which Tony, of course, did. Right into Loki’s welcoming embrace and a gentle kiss. He wrapped his arms around Loki’s neck and returned the kiss with all the pent-up enthusiasm of the past few days, letting it all flow out through his lips and his hands and his hips pushed up close against Loki’s.

Loki allowed it for all of one minute before pulling back. “I should go unpack all the food. I’ll make us something special for supper.”

“Do you have to?” Tony asked, dropping his arms down to encircle Loki’s waist and prevent him from moving too far. “Can’t that wait for half an hour? I can think of at least one thing to do right now that’s way more fun than cooking.”

“I still don’t think you’re fully recovered from your illness, Tony,” Loki said.

“No, I am,” Tony insisted. “I feel fine. Fantastic. Very much interested in physical activity.” And that was all mostly true, too. He still felt weak, and found he tired more easily and needed longer periods of rest, but compared to how he had been a week earlier, he was in excellent shape.

Tracing a finger down the outline of Tony’s cheek, Loki looked skeptical. “I don’t know...”

“Please, Loki,” Tony whispered. “I know you’re not sure about some things, but that’s fine. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t expect anything from you. I mean, apart from some mindless, feral sex, if you’re up for it. But if you decide that’s all this is, I’ll accept that. If you ultimately decide we need to part ways, I’ll accept that too, and move on. But I really, _really_ hope I can see you naked at least one more time before that happens. I want to be with you for however long I can, in whatever way I can. However you’ll let me.”

He dropped his head down onto Loki’s shoulder and closed his eyes, listening to Loki’s shallow breathing. A second later, he felt a hand rest on the back of his neck, and another on his hip. “Tony.” Loki’s voice fluttered in his ear. “You don’t even know what you’re doing...”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Tony agreed.

They went wordlessly into Tony’s bedroom, without a candle and without stopping to light the fire. In darkness, Tony carefully removed each layer of Loki’s clothes, and Loki did the same for him. The bedsheets were cold against his naked skin, but the warmth of Loki’s touch set his body on fire, and the trail of Loki’s tongue drawing a line down from his neck and stomach to between his waiting thighs made everything twice as heated. He gasped as Loki kissed and licked every intimate part of him, trying desperately to hold off coming too soon, until Loki slid inside and he could let himself go. Squeezing his legs around Loki’s waist and his arms around Loki’s back, all he wanted was to bring everything into himself, to selfishly have and keep Loki as his own. Exactly like this, bound together in pleasure.

“No don’t,” he whispered when Loki, after a moment of finality and stillness, went to pull away. “Just... just stay a minute. Don’t move yet.”

Loki didn’t ask why. Maybe he knew why, and maybe he felt the same: he let his head fall down onto the pillow so that his breath flowed down onto Tony’s shoulder. Tony, feeling the pounding of his own heart and the distant echo of Loki’s beating in return against his chest, closed his eyes. He raised his hand to rake through Loki’s hair, damp with sweat. If he could only hold onto this moment, this one, perfect moment, for as long as he could... If he could only hold onto Loki...


	11. Chapter 11

Tony was sure he’d never tire of Loki bringing him breakfast in bed. Especially when breakfast included all the variety of foods he’d been missing: fried ham, fresh grapes, an orange, cheese, and soft, white bread with honey. It all tasted better than anything he’d eaten in a long time.

“How do you feel this morning?” Loki asked him as he ate.

“Fine,” he replied. “Perfectly well.”

He waited until Loki left to take the finished tray back to the kitchen to get out of bed and dress himself. But if he put enough effort in, he could stand without shaking or swaying, and he could pretend his head didn’t hurt, and he could lie about being able to see clearly, and he could hide this small relapse from Loki. Because that was all it was. A minor setback brought on by exhaustion from the previous night’s activities. He could hide it easily enough if he was careful. Loki didn’t need to know and didn’t need to worry.

Loki would have no reason to insist on creating another distancing gap between them.

In any case, Tony had no time to wallow around being sick again. With all the new supplies, it was time to go back to work. He started by moving everything from the crates to the print room, arranging the boxes of chemical powder on the table, then going back upstairs to see if he could load some of the film into one of his cameras. That task proved to be more difficult than anticipated. The spool had been made for an entirely different type of camera, and no matter how Tony tried to modify the camera’s pin or replace it entirely with something else from his stash of odds and ends, it wasn’t working. The spool wouldn’t load, and he couldn’t get the film to wind across to the other side.

Frustrated, he set it aside. His head hurt too much, and his vision kept blurring from fatigue. The longer he stared at the delicate camera parts, the less clear they became. He needed to do something else for the day: something that required no fiddly finger work or staring intently down at tiny springs. Prints. He had new printing supplies to test out. That would be a more relaxing place to begin.

Paper first: there was still a little developer left from his old stock that he could use to make a few prints, and he might as well use it all. He chose a negative, mounted it in a bracket, and switched off all but the dull amber work-light in the room. He set the focus on the enlarger and was about to reach for a sheet of paper when there was a sudden snap and everything went dark as the electric light failed.

With the light-blocking curtains on the windows, the room was pitch black, and Tony stood there blindly for a moment waiting to see if the electricity would come back on as it typically did in Buffalo after this kind of interruption. After counting to thirty and nothing happening, he went to investigate. Maybe Thor was working on something and had shut off supply to the house. When he opened the door, though, the first thing he noticed was a foul smell, acrid and burnt, wafting through the hall.

It was coming from the kitchen. He followed it to its source, which seemed to be the floorboards beneath the table. If he crouched down on his hands and knees, he could smell it most acutely there. But worse, it looked like a thin stream of smoke was spiraling up between the cracks.

“Damn it,” he muttered to himself. As per usual during the day, Thor was nowhere to be seen, and Loki had disappeared entirely. Where they always disappeared to, perhaps Tony would one day learn, but if a small electrical fire was about to erupt beneath the kitchen floor, this wasn’t the time to try to find out. He pulled the table aside, grabbed the iron poker from the tool rack next to the stove, and pried up the floorboard. Old and loose, it came up easily. Underneath, the scorched carcass of a rat that had chewed partially through an electrical wire lay smoking.

“Damn it, _damn it_ ,” Tony swore. Where in the world was Thor, anyway? This seemed like the sort of thing he should have to deal with. But no, it was clearly Tony’s lucky day for unpleasant situations. Grabbing the stove tongs, he carefully fished the dead rat out from the floor, and dropped it into the kitchen waste bin. Thor could be the one to worry about that aspect later. Tony would take care of the more pressing concern of shutting down the electrical current running through the damaged wiring before it caused a fire.

The only place the electrical source could be, judging by the layout of the wiring, was the cellar. And the cellar, where Tony had never yet ventured to go, had to be on the other side of that door in the corner of the kitchen.

He braced himself for it to be locked as he tried the handle, but to his surprise the door opened easily. Beyond, a set of steep and rickety-looking wooden stairs led down into thick, shadowy blackness. Not willing to gamble on the electric switch on the wall, Tony instead grabbed a kerosene lamp from the kitchen shelf before heading down into the dark. The lamp illuminated only a few feet around him, making it difficult to see much, but if he followed the wire from the switch on the wall, it led off to his right. The main shutoff would be somewhere in that direction.

A strange sound filled the air down at the bottom of the stairs, and it took him a second to figure out what it was: a faint electrical hum, without a discernable pitch, tingling in his ears. He paused to shine his lamp out over the vast, open space of the cellar. Gleaming back at him, like animal eyes in the forest, were dozens of shiny metallic caps and coils, all joined in a spiderweb network by hundreds of feet of wire. So these were Thor’s batteries. And as Tony shone his lamp in different directions he could see that the wires went everywhere: from battery to battery, from battery to ceiling beam, from beam to wall, and from wall to some kind of converter with more wires that led directly out through the back of the house in the direction of the wind turbines. It all criss-crossed the cellar like a maze, and Tony immediately understood why Loki told him never to come down here. One wrong step and he could easily electrocute himself on any one of those wires.

He stayed close to the staircase as he made his way to the back wall. That’s where the converter was, and that’s where all the battery wires led, which meant logically the house’s main switch would be there too. And that was indeed where he found it: in the back corner under the stairs, surrounded by a frame of cobwebs. He prayed for an absence of actual spiders as he reached up to pull the switch and shut off the electricity.

As he pulled the switch down, the hair on the back of his neck suddenly stood up and filled him with the worst sensation of dread. His heart rate picked up speed. And he felt, in a way that seemed more sure than anything, that he was being watched. Someone else was there, behind him, where he couldn’t see. He felt certain of it. The question was, though: did he want to look? Did he want to turn around and see what he knew would be there? Or did he want to turn around and _not be able to see_ what he knew was there?

Slowly, taking a breath and then clenching his jaw, he turned with the lamp held out in front of him.

There was nothing, except for a cold pocket of air in front of his face, and the gleam of the lamp off the batteries. Their hum filled his ears with the sound of static.

“I know you’re there,” he whispered to the darkness. “Who are you?”

Somewhere out over the field of humming batteries, a pale light began to glow.

Tony’s heart sped to twice its already racing speed, and his throat went dry as his neck and shoulders began to prickle with cold sweat. The light, shimmering between green and white and yellow, grew brighter and larger as it drifted through the air. It was joined by another. Then a third, and a fourth, all converging around Tony as he pressed his back up against the stair post. As they came closer, they became clearer, their light pulsing in almost human shapes.

Women. All of them. And naked, like the ghosts he had seen upstairs, with their long hair crackling like lightning around their skeletal bodies. Empty sockets fixed eyeless gazes on him, and mouths without tongues fell open and closed without a sound.

They were trying to say something to him. He knew – he _knew_ – but their shrivelled lips moved like smoke and there was no way to even begin to decipher their words. One reached out to him with her fleshless arm. Where she touched, bony fingers just skimming his sleeve, felt numb as ice.

Tony ran.

He jerked himself out of his frozen stupor, forcing his shaking legs to move. He ducked under the frame of the stairway and almost tripped over a loose board, but caught himself. The leather soles of his shoes skidded against the packed dirt floor. But the ghosts were still there, surrounding him, moving wherever he did with their clawing arms and withered skulls instead of faces. Still moving their mouths, still trying to speak, still drowned out by the silence... Tony couldn’t get away. He spun around, looking for any gap in their closing circle, and ducked to the right.

But fatigue made him slow, and fear made him clumsy, and he miscalculated his movement, stepping too close to the batteries. Off-balance, he swung his arm out to steady himself. His hand brushed one of the coils. Electricity ripped through his body with a force he could _hear_ , flooding his limbs with a knife-sharp shock and ringing like a gong between his ears. The lamp fell from his hand, rolling away. His body, rigidly paralyzed, seemed to take forever to follow. His consciousness faded, and he never even hit the ground.

ooo

The next time he opened his eyes, everything was so bright. He was back in his bedroom. In bed. And there was Loki, in a nearby chair, reading. He opened his mouth to speak, but his throat was so parched all that came out was a crackling groan.

Loki looked up. “Tony. You’re awake. Good. How do you feel?”

“Terrible,” he tried to answer as Loki came over to sit at his side. His head felt ready to explode. Every muscle in his body ached. His right hand throbbed with a stinging pain. Glancing down, he could see that it was bandaged.

“Do you remember what happened?”

He almost answered yes, of course, until he tried to think back over anything that he’d done in recent memory. The last thing he could recall was...was...

“You were in the cellar,” Loki told him. “Thor came in from working on the turbines yesterday evening to find the electricity in the kitchen off and the cellar door open. He went down and there you were, lying unconscious next to the batteries. Your hand was burned. You must have touched one of them.” Loki shook his head. “Why did you go down there? I told you it was dangerous.”

“The rat,” Tony mumbled. He remembered that. “There was...” The sound caught in his dry throat and ushered in a coughing fit, until Loki handed him a glass of water. He drank it all without pause. That was better. “There was a rat,” he started again. “I was in my print room about to try out the new photo paper when the lights went out. I found a rat had chewed through the wiring under the kitchen floor. I had to go down to the cellar to shut off the electrical supply before it started a fire. And then...” As he talked his way through it, the memories began to return. The stairs, the cellar, the switch... the ghosts.

“And then what?” Loki asked.

“There are ghosts in the cellar,” he said. “I could see them, Loki. Plainly. Right there in front of me, with no lens or anything... there they were.”

Loki’s face registered no surprise. “Many ghosts?”

“A dozen. At least. They looked the same as the ones I’d seen up here: female, skeletal, naked with flowing hair... I suppose it was the electromagnetic field given off by the batteries, wasn’t it? That allowed them to appear visible? All that electricity must’ve made it possible for me to see them. Which means,” he added, struggling against his stiff body to sit up, “I should go back down there. If I can see them, I can probably get a clear photograph on that regular film I bought. I won’t need anything specialized. If I can see them, any film will do.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Loki answered with a shake of his head.

“Why not? Loki, I can _see_ the ghosts down there! All the pictures I take are always only of something I _hope_ is there. I never know what I’m capturing until I develop the negative. But if I can _see_ the ghosts in the cellar, I can be sure to get exactly what I want on film!”

“And risk almost killing yourself again?”

“That was an accident,” Tony insisted. “I had to go all the way to the back corner to shut off the electricity, and the ghosts surrounded me, and I panicked and fell. That won’t happen again. If I go back down, I can set up my camera at the bottom of the stairs. Away from the batteries.”

“I would suggest you discuss that plan with Thor.”

In other words, Tony thought to himself: not a chance. Between the outburst over the Carlisle trip and now how angry he would certainly be over Tony going down into the cellar, the chances of Thor agreeing to help in any way would be slim at best. But maybe, if Tony could build his own batteries, and place them on the third floor to create his own electromagnetic field... That would be something to consider. He had no supplies, but another adventure to a nearby town could solve that problem. It would certainly give him something to do over the winter.

“But for now,” Loki said, standing up again, “I’ll make you some dinner. And perhaps put that chicken you bought in the oven to roast for tonight. How does that sound to you?”

“Perfect,” said Tony.

“Good. Now stay in bed and try to rest. Does your hand hurt much?   Do you want me to bring you some snow?”

Tony flexed his fingers. The skin on his palm throbbed hot, but felt better when he slid his hand between the cool sheets. “No, I think I’m fine.” He’d take something later when the pain in his body outweighed his exhaustion and he could convince himself to get up and find his medicine box. Until then, he lay back down, closed his eyes, and tried to ignore how much everything hurt.

An hour later, Loki returned, bringing with him something that smelled wonderfully like fried fish. And another something that looked disappointingly like Thor.

It was probably a look of silent apology that sat on Loki’s face as he carried the food tray into the room and set it down on Tony’s lap. Immediately picking up the fork, Tony braced himself for the oncoming lecture from Thor. If he had to be yelled at, he at least wanted to be doing something else while it was happening. And food made an excellent distraction.

But instead of saying anything about the cellar, or the batteries, or the accident, Thor simply stood at the foot of Tony’s bed and asked, “How are you feeling today?”

Tony looked up over a mouthful of cabbage salad. “Um... not terrible?”

“It was a harrowing experience I had yesterday, finding you down in the cellar. I feared at first you were dead. It’s a relief to see you awake today.”

“It’s a relief to be alive,” Tony replied.

Smiling tightly, Thor nodded. “I hope Loki has been taking good care of you.”

An unpleasant feeling began to squirm in Tony’s gut like a writhing snake. He stared back at Thor, looking for any hidden meaning in those words but coming up empty-handed. Did Thor _know_? Or did he suspect what had been going on with Loki? Suspicion would be bad enough. Resisting the urge to look over at Loki, Tony shrugged. “I suppose, yes. He’s been bringing me my meals and making sure I’m comfortable.”

“Good. You are our guest, and Loki’s responsibility. I hope he continues to fulfil his duties and be an attentive host.”

That time, Tony did look over at Loki, because Thor did. Standing silently, Loki’s expression appeared calmly neutral. But only on the surface. Inside, Tony knew something buzzed with anger. “Of course,” Loki softly replied. “That is, as you say, my duty.”

“Then I will leave you in Loki’s capable hands,” Thor said, smiling back at Tony again. “I know he will look after you.” Then he left as unexpectedly as he arrived, disappearing out the door and down the stairs with the sound of retreating footsteps.

Tony looked back over at Loki, whose glare stayed trained on the empty doorway. “Does he... know?” he asked. He had to ask. The snake crawling through his innards was too active to naively assume Thor meant anything innocent by those comments.

But Loki just scowled. “No. Ignore him. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“Are you sure? He sounded...” Tony couldn’t place exactly what Thor sounded like. All he knew was that it wasn’t a good sign.

“Yes, I’m sure. Finish your dinner, Tony.”

“Will you stay in here with me while I do?”

Loki, who had taken two steps towards the door, stopped and turned back. “I suppose I can. If you wish.”

“I wish,” said Tony. “It may sound awkward and unwholesome coming from Thor, but I still appreciate you being ‘an attentive host’ and looking after me. Also, this fish is fantastic. I love fish. Used to look forward to fish night every Friday when I was a boy. We should have it more often.”

“Unfortunately, we live rather far from any significant water source.”

“Uh, then where does the water in the taps come from?”

“From a well.”

“Oh. Right. Why are you still standing over there, though? Sit down.”

With obvious reluctance, Loki sat on the edge of the bed, well out of reach of any attempts at hand-holding or leaning-on. In retaliation, Tony slid down under the covers until he could just reach to poke Loki’s bottom with his toe.

“Why are you sitting so far away?”

“Because I’m trying to... think about things,” Loki answered.

He poked Loki again. “What things?”

Loki stood up and moved to the other side of the bed, out of poking distance. “The same things I was thinking about before. And the things you said to me about leaving this place. Abandoning it, going somewhere new, starting over...” He sighed. “I think you’re right, Tony. There’s nothing left here except fading memories and impossible dreams of what will never return. We hold onto this house because we have nothing else, trying to cling to its former glory, but if I think about it objectively... Why? Why do we do that? Why bother? Why draw out the inevitable by lying to ourselves that anything is ever going to get better? Would it not be a better plan to salvage what little we have left and move on? The past is never coming back, no matter how much Thor wishes it.”

“Move on where?” Tony asked.

“I don’t know. The immediate answer that comes to mind is London, but that would be a foolish choice. London has nothing for us. Neither does Liverpool, or even Carlisle. America, Canada, Australia... those are the options now. Somewhere with a future, where the energy is young and vibrant and uninhibited; those places would be better for us.”

Tony had no idea what Loki meant by that last sentence, but he liked the part he did understand: the part about leaving England for America. “Alright,” he said, nodding to Loki. “If that’s what you want, you should start making plans. I can help you. Advice up front? You don’t want to go to New York City. Everybody goes through there, and most of them stay there, and it’s too crowded. Instead, go west.   There’s a lot of wide open land out there where you’d feel right at home.”

“And you?” Loki quietly asked, looking down at the bed.

“Me? I have nothing desperately calling me back to Buffalo. If you wanted to head off on a wild adventure out west, I’d be right at your side. Just tell me when and I’ll be ready to go.”

“Spring,” said Loki, giving one quick, resolute nod as if finalizing the decision then and there. “We can’t leave any time soon; it’s been snowing for the past two days and the roads will be impassible in your motorcar and dangerous over long distances even by horse. In spring, as soon as the snow has gone, we can return to Liverpool and find a ship bound for New York or Halifax or... I honestly do not even care where, as long as it’s away from this place.”

“Spring,” Tony repeated. That sounded fine to him. Not as fine as ‘two days from now’ but perhaps a little more practical. Loki was right about being unable to drive through the snow. They would have to wait out the winter here. Then come April, maybe even March, they could be back on their way across the Atlantic. Three or four months. He could live with that. “And Thor?” he asked.

“Thor would have to come with us,” Loki replied, as if that were the only option.

“What if he wants to stay here?”

“It’s not possible. He can’t stay here without me. He would die.”

Snorting, Tony laughed at Loki’s hyperbole, even if Loki didn’t. “I think he’s stubborn enough to find a way to manage without you.”

“Hm.” That was all Loki said. One single sound, not even a word.

Tony pushed his food tray aside, and Loki quickly stood up to take it away. “Are you going to come back?” Tony asked.

Loki frowned. “Come back?”

“You always disappear and I never know where you are until it’s time to bring me more food. But if you have nothing better to do, why don’t you come back and sit with me and read? Or anything? It gets boring as anything up here by myself.”

“If you wish,” said Loki. “I have a few important things I must attend to, but I can return and sit with you afterward.”

“Good.”

As Loki left, Tony rolled over and pulled the covers up to fully bury himself. His head still hurt, and his entire body still ached, and his hand still throbbed and burned under the bandage. But all he could do was go to sleep and hope that when he woke up he felt better. That seemed to be all he had been doing lately: feeling terrible, going to sleep, and hoping he felt better when he woke.

Maybe one of these days it would actually work, and he would wake up feeling like his old self again.


	12. Chapter 12

When Tony woke, it was in darkness to the sounds of wind howling and the shutters rattling. Whatever storm raged outside, some smaller twin raged inside his pounding head, making every bang and crash of the shutters against the windows almost unbearable. He lifted his hands to his face. They shook, and his arms struggled to find the strength to do even that one tiny thing, and when he felt the skin on his forehead it was cold and clammy to the touch.

Beside him, on top of the covers but still snuggled close with one arm tucked around his chest, was Loki.

“Loki?” he groaned. “Hey – Loki?”

Loki’s eyes blinked open. “Hm?”

“I feel pretty bad right now. Whole body hurts. Can you-”

Immediately, Loki’s eyes flew open and he jerked away, looking down with a horrified expression at where his arm had been resting across Tony’s chest. “Oh no...” he whispered.

“It’s fine,” Tony assured him. “I’ll be fine. I just need you to-”

“Wait here,” Loki said. Jumping up from the bed, he straightened his clothes and went for the door. “I’ll bring you something. Stay in bed. Don’t try to move.”

“No, Loki, I don’t need...” With a sigh, Ton y let his words trail off into nothing. It was no use; Loki was already gone. “I just need a couple Aspirin,” he muttered to himself. And now it looked as if he’d have to get it by himself.

He shivered as he swung his legs out of bed and his feet hit the cold floor. His entire body ached in protest as he forced himself into a standing position, and his muscles wobbled with uncertainty as he made his way to the dressing table and dug around in the top drawer for his medicine box. He fished out two white tablets and quickly swallowed them. The bitter, powdery taste stuck unpleasantly in his throat.

“Loki?” he called out, trying not to cough. “Can you bring me some water?”

He listened for an answer, but nothing came. Shuffling over to the door, he called again. “Loki?”

There was still no answer. He moved out into the hallway, then to the top of the stairs, and was about to call for Loki again when something made him pause. Faintly, from downstairs, probably in the kitchen, he could hear two voices that could only be Loki and Thor. Arguing. Shouting. He couldn’t make out their words, but it was clear that they were angry.

One word, though, he did hear clearly. His own name. One of them said “Tony”, and it sounded like Loki.

That grabbed his interest. Loki and Thor fighting, he would ignore. Loki and Thor fighting over something to do with him, though, was the sort of thing he wanted to know about. He was certain, from Thor’s behavior earlier, that Thor knew about the situation with Loki, and that Loki only lied about Thor knowing so Tony wouldn’t worry. But Tony, being the kind of person who would rather know an uncomfortable truth than live in blissful ignorance...

He had to support himself with both hands on the railing going down the stairs, taking one struggling, shaky step at a time. Once he reached the bottom, it was a slow shuffle across the floor, avoiding the drifts of snow that had come in through the burnt hole in the tower. He stopped in the hallway halfway to the kitchen door, there able to hear everything that was said while remaining unseen.

“It’s your duty, Loki!” Thor was in the middle of shouting. “If you don’t, the tree will die! WE will die!”

“It’s not that urgent!” Loki shouted right back. “We can last another few months! Possibly even a year! The spells I’ve worked so far will sustain life for at least-”

Thor interrupted with something, though Tony wasn’t listening over the sudden rush of blood pulsing in his ears. _Spells_? What in the world had Loki meant by that? He felt some of the strength leave his legs as he sagged against the wall, barely able to hold himself upright.

“I’m only telling you to wait, Thor!” he heard Loki say. “I know what I’m doing! I have a plan!”

“A plan to do what?” Thor snarled. “Run off to America with your human lover?!”

“That’s not fair-”

“Abandon everything we have? Risk it all? Risk our lives?!”

“The risk is barely-”

“It’s still a risk I’m unwilling to take! I forbid it. Finish what you started, Loki. Be done with it. Kill him now.”

_Kill..._

Tony’s heart pounded like a hammer in his throat, constricting his airway so much he could barely breathe.

“No,” Loki said, softer. “I won’t. I’m sorry, but I won’t.”

“You brought him here to-”

“And I changed my mind!” Loki snarled. “I won’t do this any more! Not with him! Not with anyone, but certainly not with Tony!”

“You call him by name as if he is of any worth at all.”

“He is to me. And I will not harm him. We will live out the winter here, and in the spring, I will take a cutting from the tree and leave this forsaken place and start over somewhere new.”

“No,” said Thor. “You won’t leave. You will stay here, and we will continue living as we always have.”

“On what power?!”

“Your human’s life will buy us at least another three years. Then we find another.”

“Or perhaps _you_ will have to find another. And also find somebody who can harvest the life force and render the blood into an acceptable sacrifice. Because I will not do it. No longer.”

The floor creaked as somebody moved, and a new kind of fear knocked the terrified paralysis from Tony’s body. He had to run. He had to force his weak, shaking legs to run, back up to his bedroom, and grab his necessities, then somehow find a way down to the carriage house without being seen and hope to God he could drive through this snow, even as far as the nearest village or farmhouse...

Before he could move, Thor spoke again. “Very well. You won’t finish him? I will. I’ll snap his neck, and if you have any sense at all you’ll take his body to the altar and _save our lives_ instead of fooling yourself into thinking you love him and jeopardizing everything we are!”

That was enough to push Tony into action. Stumbling and shuffling and keeping his hand on the wall for balance, he hurried as fast as he could manage back to the staircase. It was so much harder going up than down, trembling legs struggling to lift his weight and receiving little help from his equally weak arms trying to pull him up along the railing. Halfway up, his foot slipped on the snow-dampened carpet, and he crashed down to his knees with an involuntary cry of pain.

Footsteps coming closer meant somebody heard. Scrambling to get away, he crawled the rest of the way up the stairs, reaching the top as Thor appeared in the open foyer below. “Stay away from me!” he shouted as Thor approached the bottom step.

Thor, giving no answer, took a step up.

Pure panic helped Tony to stand, and a surge of adrenaline propelled him forward, down the hall, and into his bedroom. He lunged for the dressing table as threw open the drawer. Inside was a pistol. He grabbed it out and whipped around just as Thor appeared in the doorway.

“Are you going to shoot me?” Thor asked in a dangerously calm voice.

“I just might,” Tony hissed in reply. “I’m a pretty good shot.”

“Your entire body is shaking. Your hands not least of all. Are you sure you’re in any state to use that gun?”

Without bothering to think of anything decent to say in reply, Tony shifted his aim over to the table next to the door and fired one shot. It shattered the teacup sitting there. “I’m confident in my abilities,” he said, pointing the pistol back at Thor. “If I can hit that teacup I’m pretty sure I can hit you. Now why don’t you start telling me what the hell is going on here? What are you? Satanists? Some other crazy cult? You have three seconds to start talking before I shoot you.”

“Tony, don’t.”

That was Loki’s voice, coming from behind Thor. And that was Loki, appearing in the doorway at Thor’s side.

“Put the gun down. Please.”

Tony shook his head. “No. No way. Not as long as he’s still in the room. He wanted to kill me. Isn’t that right?” he asked, motioning to Thor with the gun.

The pain on Loki’s face was clear as day, but nowhere near enough to make Tony feel sorry for him. Not any more. “How much did you hear?” Loki asked.

“Enough to know that you two are goddamn crazy, talking about _spells_ and... and _sacrifice_... What are you? I want to know. You’re going to explain all this, and you’re going to tell me what’s going on. _Now_.”

Loki was the one who took a preparatory breath, but Thor was the one who spoke first. “We are gods.”

Unable to help himself, Tony laughed. “Gods?” he echoed back. It was too absurd. Thor was insane.

“Of ancient times,” Thor went on, undeterred by Tony’s disbelief. “Gods of old religions that long ago faded from memory. Gods that were once feared for our might... and are now reduced to nothing, living in this bleak hell, trying only to survive.”

He paced to the left and the barrel of Tony’s gun followed him, keeping square on his chest. “Did you know, centuries ago, we were worshiped by the people of this land? From peasants up to kings. They praised our names and gave sacrifice to us. To them, it was an honor to give one’s life to the gods. To give the ultimate gift so that we could grow stronger. At one time, they came to us by the dozens, and their blood watered the great tree and soaked the earth until it turned red. They called this hill the Crimson Peak. The realm of the gods.”

“I don’t believe you,” Tony muttered.

“That was a thousand years ago, before the plague of Christianity covered all of Europe and we began to lose our hold. After that... people were afraid to pray in our names. They turned their backs on our ways for fear of being branded as witches. Soon none were left. Our power dwindled. Back then, there were dozens of us, and we would walk among our human followers and give them our knowledge in exchange for sacrifice. Then that all changed and they began hunting us down. Killing us. Calling us devils and demons and cutting off our heads or burning us alive or...”

He paused to take a breath and stopped his pacing, having come back to stand near the door with Loki. “Everyone we ever knew was killed or fled in terror to... I don’t even know where, or if they still live. But in all of England, only Loki and I remain, in this house that we built all those centuries ago to keep us safe and preserve our history. Of all the ancient gods, only Loki and I remain. The last of our kind. You should be honored,” he said, nodding at Tony, “to give your life for us.”

“I probably should be,” Tony heard himself say. Voice completely detached from mind.   “But it turns out I’m not, so...”

Thor was insane. He was insane. That was the only explanation for this: he’d been on his own without human interaction for so long that he’d started to drift into a fantasy world, where he and his brother were mythical deities. An escapist excuse for their behavior and-

Tony’s stomach dropped hard and fast with a sudden realization. The ghosts. All the ghosts in the house... were they the lingering remains of those who had been ‘sacrificed’ to feed Thor’s delusion? “There were others,” he said aloud. “Before me. You killed them?”

“Loki did,” said Thor, glancing over at Loki, who closed his eyes and turned away as if unable to hear the truth. “Loki siphoned their energy, and fed their blood to the great tree. Just as he will do to you. Loki?”

“I won’t,” Loki said, almost too softly for Tony to hear.

“You will do as I tell you.”

“I won’t,” Loki repeated, louder, turning to face Thor. “This has gone on long enough. We need to stop. We need to end it.”

“No, we need to-”

“End it. Now. The old days are gone, Thor. They’re never coming back. All that tattered glory you cling to in your memory is _never coming back_. It’s over. We have to move on.”

“There’s no way to move on,” Thor insisted. “There is only perseverance and survival. This is who we are. This is our place in the world! And we need to keep hold of it!”

“I won’t do it,” Loki said, quiet again as he held Thor’s domineering gaze.

“You need to. We have no choice.”

“I won’t.”

“Loki, it is your duty! To your history and your family!”

But Loki just repeated, “I won’t. Not any more.”

The wind howled past the windows in the silence that followed. Tony’s arms shook under the strain of holding his gun on Thor for so long. He looked from one to the other, from Thor to Loki. What were the possible outcomes of this standoff? Either Loki would break down under Thor’s assault, and kill Tony, or Loki would refuse to compromise, and Thor would follow through with his promise made in the kitchen, or...

Or nothing. No, those were the only two options. Thor was too far invested to back down now. Tony could see that in his face, the way he glared at Loki, and in his stance, the way he tried to make himself taller and more imposing to intimidate Loki into action. This could only end in one of two ways. With one of them trying to add another ghost to the house.

Unless Tony acted first.

The first shot was the hard one. On the first shot, he squeezed the trigger so slowly while praying for some other benevolent spirit to take the pistol out of his hands and do the deed for him. He squeezed the trigger, and held his breath, until the shot finally exploded from the gun barrel and the recoil slammed back against his palm. The bullet hit Thor in the shoulder.

Everything after that came easier: four shots, all in a row, each striking Thor in the chest as he spun around to stare at Tony with a look of shock on his face. Four bullets, one after another, in the span of what felt like no time at all. The blink of an eye. One second Thor was standing there, mouth falling open as if to cry out in surprise. The next second, he was on the floor. He had fallen backwards, landing halfway out in the hallway.

Loki still stood there by the doorway, stuck in their interrupted conversation, for at least another second after that. Then he, too fell, but onto his knees, landing at Thor’s side with a gasp and a cry. He pressed his hands to Thor’s chest, trying to contain the flow of blood, but it was no use. The bullets had done their job.

Over the ringing noise of gunfire in Tony’s ears, the wind still moaned and the snow still battered itself against the house. He couldn’t bring himself to move. Not yet. Not even to lower the gun, which he still held pointed at the empty doorway. Slowly, he made himself breathe, inhaling the steadying, cold air and exhaling the dizziness that welled up in his chest.

He finally let his arms fall down to his sides. “I’m sorry,” he said, half whispering. “Loki... I had to.”

There was no reply from Loki, who still knelt silently on the floor with his hands in Thor’s pooling blood.

“Loki, I had to,” Tony repeated. “He would have killed me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But...”

“I know,” Loki answered. Looking up, his face was deathly white and expressionless. Shock. He was in shock. He slowly stood, and Tony reflexively raised the gun again. “You don’t have any bullets left, Tony,” he said.

That was true. Tony’s heart, which had almost started to slow down, beat faster once again. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked. He had to ask.

Looking from Thor to Tony and back again, Loki sadly shook his head. “No. I... There’s no reason to. It would do no good. I need to...” Sighing, he gave his entire body a shake. “I have work to do. If you’ll excuse me, I have to... I have to...”

He didn’t say what he had to do. All he did was kneel down again and, with detached, mechanical precision, lacking any shred of emotion, gather Thor’s body in his arms. He left the room without further words.

Tony dropped the gun, letting it clatter next to his feet. On the floor, in the doorway, a deep red bloodstain gleamed in the moonlight. He had to close his eyes. It was too surreal. All of this. Everything that had happened since he woke up. What he needed to do, then, was get back into bed, and pray to God it had only been a dream or a hallucination or a fevered vision, and when he woke up again in the morning it would all be back to normal...

Instead, he found himself stepping forward.

As slowly as he needed to go to keep from shaking and falling, he crossed the room. He stepped around the blood, into the hallway, and over to the stairs. Red spatters lay like a trail of breadcrumbs before him, leading down through the drifting snow and around past the library. Into the hallway to the right. Towards the great hall.

The door was open, Tony saw when he rounded the corner. It was open, and through its dark gateway spilled the blue light of the moon borne on thousands of tiny snowflakes. He stumbled forward, ignoring the freezing wind against his skin and the snow at his feet, until he stood inside the great hall and stared up at what was before him.

It was the tree from his dream. Only this one was real. The floor of the hall had been built around it, leaving a circular gap in the middle for its trunk to grow straight up from the cold earth. It towered up almost as tall as the room itself, three storeys high, reaching for the light that spilled in through the ruined roof. And just as in the dream, its branches were black and withered, jutting crookedly into the snowfall, bearing only a few brown leaves.

And two perfectly formed apples.

Loki stood at its base beside a stone altar. On the altar lay Thor’s body, stripped to the waist.

“What is this?” Tony asked as he approached the altar, too terrified to look at what Loki was doing but even more terrified to look away.

“This is the source of our power,” Loki replied. Still calm, still blank, still emotionless in his shock. “This tree...” He gestured up to the branches tangling above his head. “It used to live and grow. In the height of our strength, it flourished, drawing from the land and our influence. When our fortunes turned... it began to die.   There isn’t enough energy left here to feed it. Only the sacrifice of life and blood can keep it from fading entirely. It used to be we needed only one life in decades. But now... Every two years, three... Soon I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep it alive at all.”

“Then why do you?”

Lifting his hand, Loki reached up to touch one of the apples. “For these,” he said. “They sustain our life. With them, we are immortal. Without... we die.”

A chill colder than the wind and snow ran down Tony’s spine. “You’re... not human.”

“No. Thor spoke the truth. We are gods. But our power is diminished. Immortal does not mean we cannot be killed by cold or hunger or...” He looked down at the altar, and Thor’s body.

Tony, not knowing what to say, shut his mouth and stayed silent.

After a moment of stillness, Loki reached down below the altar where Tony could not see, and pulled out a knife. “He would want this,” he softly said, placing the knife at Thor’s neck. “His devotion was to this house, and this land, and our lives, and our past, and keeping that alive...” In one slick movement, Loki drew the blade across Thor’s throat to free a stream of dark red blood. Tony had to look away. “He would not want his death to be wasted,” Loki went on. Explaining the process or convincing himself, it was impossible to tell. “His blood is strong. It will feed the tree for years to come. And his life force...”

As much as it disgusted him to watch, Tony found himself unable to keep his eyes away. The blood seeping from Thor’s neck ran into channels carved into the surface of the altar, leading down to the roots of the tree, where it soaked into the earth. As it flowed, Loki placed a hand over Thor’s chest. Over a circular black tattoo identical to Loki’s own. With a few whispered words, Loki’s hand glowed with a golden light, and when he pulled it back, a pale yellow mist trailed after his fingers. He swirled it in a spiral around each apple, cloaking them with shimmering gold.

When Tony looked back down at Thor’s chest, the tattoo was gone.

“Is this... what you did to all those ghosts? All those women?”

Loki’s admission came first with a nod, then with a single word: “Yes.”

“You killed them all.”

“I drained their lives away. Through touch. Whether I want to or not, that’s what happens. Whenever I touch anyone. I siphon their energy and then... then I can give it to the tree. But yes. All the ghosts. All the women. When they stopped coming as willing sacrifices, we had to resort to trickery. Thor usually found them. I married them. I stole their lives away, and they ended up here.”

“And you never felt the least bit of remorse?”

“I never said that.”

“But how could you,” Tony demanded, “if you kept doing it?”

“Do you care so much about the animal that ends up on your plate?” asked Loki. “No, of course not. You eat it because you need food to live. I did what I did because I needed their lives to sustain my own.”

“People aren’t animals,” Tony snarled. “I’m not. And I would have ended up here, on that altar, in Thor’s place, if everything had gone according to plan. Wouldn’t I?”

When Loki didn’t answer, he asked again. “Wouldn’t I?!”

“You were never the plan,” Loki snapped back, though he was careful to keep his eyes down on his hands at the edge of the altar instead of risking a glance at Tony. “The plan was the same as it always was. Thor would find some unhappy girl and lavish her with attention, and then, when he had her hooked, would remove himself from the picture through some oafish action like dancing with her sister or being seen kissing someone else. Then it would be my turn to step in to comfort her. And she would fall for me, and we would be quickly married, and... But then you appeared, presenting an opportunity too perfect to ignore. No marriage, just you following me back here of you own choice...”

“Did you ever love any of them?”

Loki shook his head. “I couldn’t let myself.”

“And me?” Tony pressed, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know either way.

Luckily or unluckily, Loki closed his eyes and fell silent, refusing to answer.

“Damn it, Loki...”

“Why do you think I’ve been trying to distance myself from you?” Loki asked, voice sounding defeated and small. “Why do you think I’ve refused to touch you? I couldn’t do it, Tony. No matter what Thor said, I couldn’t.”

“So you’re blaming Thor.”

“No. I’m blaming both of us. And I know from your perspective we must seem like monsters. But I swear to you, Tony, we’re not evil. We don’t kill for pleasure. We don’t kill out of coldness or indifference. We do only what we must in order to survive. Like anything else in this world. No more, no less. And Thor... He is impulsive, and he is reckless, and he never thinks before he acts, but he’s a good man. All he wants is to keep our legacy alive. To keep ourselves and our traditions and never lose what we were and what we still are. Everything he does, he does for the good of our family.”

Loki’s voice hitched, and he corrected himself: “Everything he _did._ Everything he... he _was..._ ”

It all seemed to hit at once, as Loki’s shaking hand reached down once again to touch his brother’s body. All of the emotions Loki had been holding back, all of the grief the shock of Thor’s death had temporarily held at bay: it all rolled in like a tidal wave, washing over Loki and physically knocking him back. He took two uneven steps as the steady blank mask of his face cracked into pure heartache, then he crumpled down to land in the dirt. His head fell into his hands. And he wept, with sobs and cries that echoed up through the emptiness of the room and through the falling snow.

Tony knew he should have been enraged at Loki’s confession. He should have been filled with loathing, but instead he only felt... hollow inside. He couldn’t bring himself to feel the hatred he knew Loki deserved. That seemed wrong now, watching Loki’s grief. He should have felt some sense of justice knowing how his would-be murderer suffered, but there was nothing. No satisfaction. Only a small seed of pity deep in his gut for the man he though he loved, now broken down and crying like a child. Pity for the man whose brother he’d just killed.

He was no more innocent than Loki.

Forcing his frozen feet to move, he staggering forward and around to the other side of the altar where Loki sat. He leaned over to rest a hand on Loki’s shoulder, but Loki swatted it away.

“Don’t. Don’t touch me. It’s not safe.”

“You should get up,” he said. His hollow heart offered him no better sentiments.

“Leave me, Tony. Go back to your room.”

“No. You can’t stay in here. It’s not good. Come on. I’ll... I’ll make you some tea.”

Loki stared up at him as if he’d said something absurd.

“I know you need to mourn Thor, but this isn’t the place. You’ll freeze in here. Come on. Stand up.”

“You should go, Tony.”

“I will. And you should come with me. Let’s go to the kitchen.”

“No, I mean...” Loki sighed. “You need to leave this place.”

“I intend to,” Tony told him. “As soon as the snow stops. And as soon as I can stand up on my own.”

He leaned against the tree for balance as Loki, with a little shake of the head, stared up at him again.

“I don’t know if you’ll ever fully recover,” Loki murmured. “I fear I’ve done you too much damage.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing a few months of good food and sunshine won’t fix,” Tony said, trying to smile, but the way Loki kept looking at him with that crestfallen expression...

“No. The weakness and fatigue will haunt you for the rest of your life. You will be more susceptible to illness. You may die sooner than you should have otherwise.”

“And there’s nothing I can do about it?” Tony asked. When Loki offered no reply, he continued, “Nothing _you_ can do about it? You can’t fix this? Give back what you took?”

After a long pause, Loki said, “There is one way.”

“What?”

Another pause followed, but Tony kept his eyes on Loki’s face, silently pressing for an answer.

Just as silently, Loki tilted his head back and lifted his gaze to the gold-glowing apples hanging from the tree above. “Only one way, Tony,” he whispered. “But it’s not something you would ever want to do.”


	13. Epilogue

Leaning against the brick storefront, Bruce Banner pulled off his glasses and grabbed a handkerchief from his pocket to clean them. Inside the shop, his youngest daughter, Lizzie, was trying on hats to round out her wardrobe for when she started college in the fall, but it was too nice a day to wait around indoors. Instead, Bruce stood on the sidewalk in the June sunshine and watched the crowds pass by. A man with a dog. A couple with a young child. A group of school-age girls chatting happily, followed by a group of boys hitting sticks against every trash can and lamp post they passed. Cars drove by, and a taxi rolled to a stop halfway down the block.

Two men stepped out, the shorter wearing pinstriped gray and the taller dressed in black. After a cursory glance, Bruce would have ignored them completely, if not for the sound of a shockingly familiar voice.

“Well, heck. I guess I thought it would still be here. This is the right address for sure, but looks like it’s a dress shop now. That’s a shame. This used to be the best Parisian-style café in the whole city.”

That voice sounded like Tony Stark. The man _looked_ like Tony Stark, though with a modern hairstyle slickly parted on the right and a pencil-thin Clark Gable mustache. He _dressed_ like Tony stark would, in a fashionable double-breasted suit with wide, turned up cuffs on the trousers. He even _stood_ like Tony Stark, rocking back on his heels and twirling his hat in his hands as he stared at the dress shop that maybe once had been a café.   Bruce took a step forward, raised his arm to wave, and caught himself just in time.

Tony Stark had been legally declared dead nearly twenty years earlier.

The last Bruce had heard from Tony was a series of three letters. The first, dated January of 1903, had arrived in Buffalo that May and had outlined Tony’s decision not to return to America any time in the near future. The second, a year later, was an updated reiteration of the same. The third, in 1906, asked Bruce to facilitate the permanent transfer of all remaining funds in his New York account to a bank in Manchester, with no reason given. After that, no further communication arrived.

Bruce had sent a letter to the general delivery post office listed as Tony’s mailing address upon Howard Stark’s death in 1910, but had received no reply. With legal documents regarding Howard’s estate left outstanding, he had hired a private investigator out of Liverpool to travel to Tony’s last known residence, a remote estate by the name of Allerdale Hall, in an attempt to track him down.

Allerdale Hall, the investigator had reported, was a ruin. The house had been gutted by fire some years earlier, judging by the growth of vegetation, and nothing of worth remained. Only blackened walls and a few unstable patches of roof were left on that lonely hill, with a massive, dead tree inexplicably standing right in the middle of the rubble. There was no sign of Tony or the house’s owners, the Sharpe brothers.

The bank in Manchester likewise turned into a dead end. The account to which Tony’s money had been sent had been liquidated and closed within a month of the transfer, with no useful contact information provided. For five years, the investigator and ultimately the police had searched for any hint regarding the whereabouts of Tony Stark, or any clue as to what may have happened to him. Finally, in 1916, they had no choice but to abandon the investigation. He was declared legally dead, and Howard Stark’s estate and full control of Stark Industries signed over to Howard’s friend and business partner, Obadiah Stane.

If Tony Stark were still alive, he would be the same age as Bruce. Fifty-seven. This young man in the gray suit looked closer to twenty-five. The age Tony had been when Bruce last saw him.

The resemblance was uncanny. But any connection between this man and Tony Stark was also impossible. No more than wishful thinking.

“So where do we go now?” the man’s companion asked in a smooth English accent. Did he look or sound like Loki Sharpe? Bruce couldn’t tell. After so many years, recalling any details of someone he had only briefly met was impossible.

“I don’t know. We could walk back down that way and see if we find anything that looks good?”

“Nowhere too far. I don’t want to keep carrying this.”

He was holding a pot that contained some kind of plant, Bruce saw: an ornamental fruit tree by the look of it.   An odd thing to be toting around the city.

“You should’ve left it at the hotel like I told you.”

“No. I’m not letting it out of my sight until we’ve reached California and found a permanent place to settle.” He pulled a watch out of his pocket. “And since our train leaves in four hours, I suggest we simply return to the hotel now and have something to eat at the restaurant there.”

“I suppose,” the man in gray sighed. Stepping up to the curb, he waved at an approaching taxi. “You know, I still think we should’ve flown. United Air Lines flies from Newark right to San Franciso, and it takes less than twenty hours. That’s amazing, isn’t it? We could be there tomorrow instead of wasting days on trains.”

The one in black made a face as he opened the taxi door. “I tolerate motorcars for you. I absolutely draw the line at aeroplanes. No. We’re going by train.”

“You’re no fun.”

The taxi pulled away, taking the two of them with it and leaving Bruce standing on the sidewalk to stare at its retreating shape until it eventually disappeared around a corner. A moment later, he felt a tug at his sleeve.

“Daddy?”

Startled back into the present, he turned to see Lizzie standing there on his left, staring at him with an expression of concern. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said, and gave himself a shake to clear his head. “I thought I saw.... I thought I saw somebody I used to know. But I was mistaken.”

Such a thing would be impossible. Tony Stark was dead. Nobody had seen him in thirty-two years. He probably died in that fire at Allerdale Hall.

“Who?” Lizzie asked.

“Nobody recent. I knew him before you were born. Before your mother and I were even married.” Forcing a smile, he patted Lizzie’s shoulder and turned them both in the direction of the car parked a few blocks away. “You have everything you need?”

She nodded. “I think so. Still need a few pairs of stockings, but I can get those any time.”

“Good. Why don’t we grab an ice cream and then head home? I told your mother we’d be back by six.”

Bruce fished in his pocket for his car keys, jingling them against his hand. Tony Stark was dead. That was the end of the story. Whatever he had seen had been a coincidence: just a strange, unnerving coincidence. A young man who reminded him of his long-lost friend.

Nothing more than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you all enjoyed the story and its outlandish departure from the source material. Literally this whole thing started after watching Crimson Peak last year (when I had to DRIVE TO EDMONTON to meet my friends and got a CHIP IN MY CAR WINDSHIELD on the highway and was therefore in a VERY BAD MOOD) and complaining out loud to anyone who would listen: "Why the butts did Doctor Whatshisface show Edith those ghost photos at the beginning if they're not going to go anywhere with a photography and ghost science plot? That was a huge wasted opportunity and I feel personally affronted!" Also, "Why the butts were Thomas and Lucille boring old humans? LAME." Also, "LOL there is no way I'm writing a Frostiron Crimson Peak AU." And finally, "Okay but what if I did write a Frostiron Crimson Peak AU."
> 
> (This is how, for the second year in a row, I roped myself into writing a complicated historical AU for the Frostiron Bang. Apparently last year didn't teach me my lesson well enough. I needed to spend another three months staying up until 1 am researching dumb crap like Victorian doorknob mechanics and how much a ticket on the RMS Oceanic cost and the history of commercial aviation in 1934.)
> 
> Yeah so. Once again, I hope you liked the story! And thank you to my amazing artist! And thank you to Enk for always listening to me complain about how writing is haaarrrrddddddd! And I'll probably be back here next year making the exact same poor life choices and writing a rococo aristocracy AU or some such infuriating shit! :D


End file.
